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Title: Linnet: A Romance

Author: Grant Allen

Release date: February 17, 2015 [eBook #48296]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LINNET: A
ROMANCE ***

Grant Allen.

L I N N E T
A R O M A N C E

By GRANT ALLEN
Author of “UNDER SEALED ORDERS,”
“MISS CAYLEY’S ADVENTURES,” ETC.

N e w Yo r k : : : N E W A M S T E R D A M
B O O K C O M PA N Y : : : : M C M

Copyright, 1900
BY
NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY

NOTE
This story was written in the midst of the scenery which
it describes; but the author desires to acknowledge his
obligations for many touches of local colour to Mr.
Baillie-Grohman’s admirable work on “Tyrol and the
Tyrolese.” The quatrain on p. 283 is quoted, with
some slight modifications (to adapt it to its place
in this novel), from a poem by Mr. William Watson.

CONTENTS

I. “TO INTRODUCE MR FLORIAN WOOD”
II. A FRESH ACQUAINTANCE
III. WITHIN SIGHT OF A HEROINE
IV. ENTER LINNET
V. THE WIRTH’S THEORY
VI. THE ROBBLER
VII. WAGER OF BATTLE
VIII. THE HUMAN HEART
IX. THE MAN OF THE WORLD
X. HAIL, COLUMBIA!
XI. PRIVATE INQUIRY
XII. THE MADDING CROWD
XIII. A FIRST NIGHT
XIV. AND IF FOR EVER
XV. A CRITICAL EVENING
XVI. SCHLOSS TYROL
XVII. CAUGHT OUT
XVIII. TAKEN BY SURPRISE
XIX. SPIRITUAL WEAPONS
XX. FLORIAN ON MATRIMONY
XXI. FORTUNE’S WHEEL
XXII. A WOMAN’S STRATAGEM
XXIII. A PROPHET INDEED!
XXIV. THE ART OF PROPHESYING
XXV. A DRAMATIC VENTURE
XXVI. A WOMAN’S HEART

XXVII. AULD LAND SYNE
XXVIII. SIGNORA CASALMONTE
XXIX. FROM LINNET’S STANDPOINT
XXX. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
XXXI. WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK
XXXII. WEDDED FELICITY
XXXIII. PLAYING WITH FIRE
XXXIV. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
XXXV. GOLDEN HOPES
XXXVI. AN ECCLESIASTICAL QUESTION
XXXVII. BEGINNINGS OF EVIL
XXXVIII. HUSBAND OR LOVER?
XXXIX. DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE
XL. OPEN WAR
XLI. GOD’S LAW⁠—OR MAN’S?
XLII. PRUDENCE
XLIII. LINNET’S RIVAL
XLIV. AND WILL’S
XLV. BY AUTHORITY
XLVI. HOME AGAIN!
XLVII. SEEMINGLY UNCONNECTED
XLVIII. THE BUBBLE BURSTS
XLIX. THE PIGEON FLIES HOME
L. ANDREAS HAUSBERGER PAYS
LI. EXIT FRANZ LINDNER
LII. A CONFESSION OF FAITH

LINNET

CHAPTER I

“TO INTRODUCE MR FLORIAN WOOD”

’Twas at Zell in the Zillerthal.
Now, whoever knows the Alps, knows the Zillerthal well as the centre
of all that is most Tyrolese in the Tyrol. From that beautiful green valley,
softly smiling below, majestically grand and ice-clad in its upper forks and
branches, issue forth from time to time all the itinerant zither-players and
picturesquely-clad singers who pervade every capital and every spa in
Europe. Born and bred among the rich lawns of their upland villages, they
come down in due time, with a feather in their hats and a jodel in their
throats, true modern troubadours, setting out on the untried ocean of the
outer world⁠—⁠their voice for their fortune⁠—in search of wealth and
adventures. Guitar on back and green braces on shoulders, they start
blithely from home with a few copper kreuzers in their leather belts, and
return again after a year or two, changed men to behold, their pockets full to
bursting with dollars or louis or good English sovereigns.
Not that you must expect to see the Tyrolese peasant of sober reality
masquerading about in that extremely operatic and brigand-like costume in
the upper Zillerthal. The Alpine minstrel in the sugar-loaf hat, much-
gartered as to the legs, and clad in a Joseph’s coat of many colours, with
whom we are all so familiar in cosmopolitan concert-halls, has donned his
romantic polychromatic costume as an integral part of the business, and
would be regarded with surprise, not unmixed with contempt, were he to
appear in it among the pastures of his native valley. The ladies in corset-
bodices and loose white lawn sleeves, who trill out startling notes from the
back attics of their larynx, or elicit sweet harmonies from mediæval-looking
mandolines in Kursaals and Alcazars, have purchased their Tyrolese dress
direct from some Parisian costumier. The real cowherds and milkmaids of
the actual Zillerthal are much more prosaic, not to say commonplace,
creatures. A green string for a hat-band, with a blackcock’s plume stuck
jauntily or saucily at the back of the hat, and a dirty red lappel to the
threadbare coat, is all that distinguishes the Tyrolese mountaineer of solid
fact from the universal peasant of European Christendom. Indeed, is it not
true, after all, that the stage has led us to expect far too much⁠—in costume
and otherwise⁠—from the tillers of the soil everywhere? Is it not true that the
agricultural and pastoral classes all the world over, in spite of Theocritus

and Thomas Hardy, are apt, when one observes them impartially in the
flesh, to be earthy, grimy, dull-eyed, and unintelligent?
Florian Wood didn’t think so, however, or affected not to think so⁠—
which in his case was probably very much the same thing; for what he
really thought about anything on earth, affectation aside, it would have
puzzled even himself not a little to determine. He was a tiny man of elegant
proportions: so tiny, so elegant, that one felt inclined to put him under a
glass case and stick him on a mantelpiece. He leant his small arms upon the
parapet of a wall as they were approaching Zell, shifted the knapsack on his
back with sylph-like grace, and murmured ecstatically, with a side glance at
the stalwart peasant-women carrying basketfuls of fodder in huge creels on
their backs in the field close by, “How delicious! How charming! How
essentially picturesque! How characteristically Tyrolean!”
His companion scanned him up and down with an air of some passing
amusement. “Why, I didn’t know you’d ever been in the Tyrol before,” he
objected, bluntly. And, in point of fact, when they started together from
Munich that morning on their autumn tour, Florian Wood had never yet
crossed the Austrian frontier. But what of that? He had got out of the train
some five hours back at Jenbach station, and walked the sixteen miles from
there to Zell; and in the course of the tramp he had matured his views on the
characteristics of the Tyrol.
But he waved one lily-white hand over the earth none the less with airy
dismissal of his friend’s implied criticism. “How often shall I have to tell
you, my dear Deverill,” he said blandly, in his lofty didactic tone⁠—the tone
which, as often happens with very small men, came most familiarly of all to
him⁠—“that you unduly subordinate the ideal to the real, where you ought
rather to subordinate the real to the ideal. This, you say, is the Tyrol⁠—the
solid, uncompromising, geographically definite Tyrol of the tax-gatherer,
the post-master, and the commercial traveller⁠—⁠bounded on the north by
Bavaria, on the south by Italy, on the east by the rude Carinthian boor, and
on the west by the collection of hotels and pensions marked down on the
map as the Swiss Republic. Very well then; let me see if there’s anything
Tyrolese at all to be found in it. I have instinctive within me a picture of the
true, the ideal Tyrol. I know well its green pastures, its upland slopes, its
innocent peasantry, its fearless chamois-hunters, its beautiful, guileless, fair-
haired maidens. Arriving by rail to-day in this its prosaic prototype⁠—⁠cast
up, as it were, from the train on the sea-coast of this Bohemia⁠—⁠I turn my

eyes with interest upon the imitation Tyrol of real life, and strive earnestly
to discover some faint points of resemblance, if such there be, with the
genuine article as immediately revealed to me.”
“And you find none?” Deverill put in, smiling.
Florian waved that dainty Dresden china hand expansively once more
over the landscape before him, as if it belonged to him. “Pardon me,” he
said, sententiously; “in many things, I admit, the reality might be improved
upon. The mountains, for example, should be higher, their forms more
varied, their peaks more jagged, their sides more precipitous; the snow
should drape them with more uniform white, regardless of the petty
restrictions of gravity; the river should tear down far rockier ravines, in
more visible cataracts. But Nature has sometimes her happy moments, too.
And I call this one of them! Those women, now, so Millet-like in their
patient toil⁠—⁠how sympathetic! how charming! A less primitive society, a
less idyllic folk, would have imposed such burdens upon a horse or a
donkey. The Tyrol knows better. It is more naïve, more picturesque⁠—⁠in one
word, more original. It imposes them on the willing neck of beautiful
woman!”
“It’s terribly hard work for them,” Deverill answered, observing them
with half a sigh.
“For them? Ah, yes, I admit it, of course, poor souls!⁠—⁠but for me, my
dear fellow⁠—⁠for me, just consider! It gives me a thrill of the intensest
sensibility. In the first place, the picture is a beautiful one in itself⁠—⁠the
figures, the baskets, the frame, the setting. In the second place, it suggests
to the observant mind an Arcadian life, a true Dorian simplicity. In the third
place⁠—⁠which is perhaps the most important of all⁠—⁠it affords me an
opportunity for the luxury of sympathy. What is the trifling inconvenience
of a heavy load on their backs to these poor ignorant creatures, compared
with the refined and artistic pleasure⁠—⁠of an altruistic kind⁠—⁠which I derive
from pitying them?”
“Florian!” his friend said, surveying him comically from head to foot,
“you really are impayable. It’s no use arguing with you; it only flatters you.
You know very well in your heart you never mean a word of anything you
say; so stop your nonsense and put yourself in marching order again. Let’s
get on to Zell, and see what sort of quarters we can find in the village.”
Florian Wood came down at once from his epicurean clouds, and strode
out with his little legs in the direction of their resting-place. In spite of his

tininess, he was a capital walker. If Nature, as he averred, has sometimes
her happy moments, she certainly had one when she created her critic.
Florian Wood was a young man of a delicate habit of mind and body⁠—⁠a
just and pleasing compromise between a philosopher and a butterfly. His
figure was small but extremely graceful; his limbs were dainty but well-knit
and gazelle-like; his face, though small-featured, was very intelligent, and
distinctly good-humoured; his voice was melodious and exquisitely
modulated. And what Nature had left undone, his godfathers and
godmothers did for him at his baptism when they christened him Florian. As
plain John Wood, to be sure, he would have been nobody at all; as William
or Thomas or Henry or George, he would have been lost in the
multitudinous deep sea of London. But his parents had the glorious
inspiration of dubbing him Florian, and it acted like a charm: all went well
in life with him. A baronetcy would have been a far less valuable social
passport⁠—⁠for there are many baronets, but only one Florian. Before the
romantic rarity of that unique Christian name, the need for a surname paled
and faded away into utter nothingness. Nobody ever dreamt of calling him
“Wood”: they spoke of Florian as they once spoke of “Randolph.” On this
somewhat illogical but very natural ground, he became from his schooldays
upward the spoiled child of society. He was a toy⁠—⁠a plaything. Clubs hung
on his clear voice; women petted and made much of him. When you talk of
a man always by his Christian name alone, depend upon it, he becomes in
the end as one of the family: mere association of ideas begets in you at last
a friendly⁠—⁠nay, almost a fraternal feeling towards him.
They walked along briskly in the direction of Zell, Florian humming as
he went a few stray snatches of Tyrolese songs (or what pass in the world
for such), by way of putting himself in emotional harmony with the
environment. For Florian was modern, intensely modern. He played with
science as he played with everything else; and he could talk of the
environment by the hour with the best of them, in his airy style, as if
environments and he had been lifelong companions. But Zell itself, when
they got to it, failed somehow to come up to either of their expectations.
Florian would have made the valley narrower, or transplanted the village
three hundred feet higher up the slope of the hill. As for Will Deverill, less
critical of Nature’s handicraft, he found the inns over-civilised; the Post and
the Bräu were too fine for his taste: they had come thus far in search of
solitude and Alpine wilds, and they lighted instead on a sort of miniature

Grindelwald, with half-a-dozen inns, a respectable café, experienced (or in
other words extortionate) guides, and a regular tourist-trap for the sale of
chamois-horns and carved models of châlets. “This will never do!” Will
Deverill exclaimed, gazing round him in disgust at the Greiderer Hotel and
the comfortable Welschwirth. “This is pure civilisation!”
And Florian, looking down instinctively at his dust-encumbered boots,
murmured with a faint sigh, “A perfect Bond Street!” For Florian loved to
do everything “consummately,”⁠—⁠’twas his own pet adverb; he aimed at
universality, but he aimed quite as much at perfection in detail of the most
Pharisaical description. In Piccadilly, he went clad in a faultless miniature
frock-coat, surmounted by the silken sheen of Lincoln and Bennet’s
glossiest; but if he made up his mind to Alps and snow-fields, then Alps he
would have, pure, simple, and unadulterated. No half-way houses for him!
He would commune at first hand with the eternal hills; he would behold the
free life of the mountain folk in all its unsophisticated and primitive
simplicity.
So he gazed at his Tom Thumb boots with a regretful eye, and
murmured pensively once more, “A perfect Bond Street!”
“What shall we do now?” Will Deverill asked, stopping short and
glancing ahead towards the glaciers that close the valley.
“See that village on the left there,” Florian answered, in a rapt tone of
sudden inspiration, seizing his arm theatrically; “⁠—⁠no, not the lower one on
the edge of the level, but that high-perched group of little wooden houses
with the green steeple by the edge of the ravine: what a magnificent view of
the snow-fields to the south! From there, one must look at a single glance
over all the spreading fingers and ramifications of the valley.”
“Perhaps there’s no inn there,” Will responded, dubiously.
“No inn! You prate to me of inns?” Florian exclaimed, striking an
attitude. “In full view of these virgin peaks, you venture to raise a question
of mere earthly bedrooms⁠—⁠landlord, waiter, chambermaid! Who cares
where he sleeps⁠—⁠or whether he sleeps at all⁠—⁠in such a village as that?” He
struck his stick on the ground hard to enforce and emphasise the
absoluteness of his determination. “The die is cast,” he cried, with the
Caesaric firmness of five-feet-nothing. “We cross the stream at once, and
we make for the village!”
“Well, there’s probably somewhere we can put up for the night and
reconnoitre the neighbourhood,” Will Deverill answered, as he followed his

friend’s lead. “If the worst comes to the worst, we can fall back upon Zell;
but the priest will most likely find us a lodging.”
No sooner said than done. They mounted the steep slope, and rose by
gentle zig-zags towards the upland hamlet. At each step they took, the view
over the glacier-bound peaks that close the glen to southward, opened wider
and wider. Near an Alpine farmhouse they paused for breath. It was built of
brown wood, toned and darkened by age, with projecting eaves and basking
southern front, where endless cobs of Indian corn in treble tiers and rows
hung out drying in the sunshine. Florian drank in the pretty picture with the
intense enjoyment of youth and health and a rich sensuous nature. There
was a human element, too, giving life to the foreground. Three Tyrolese
children, a boy and two girls, in costumes more obtrusively national than
they had yet observed, stood playing with one another on the platform in
front of the farmhouse. Florian beamed on them, enchanted. “What
innocence!” he cried, ecstatically. “What untrammelled forms! What
freedom of limb! What Hellenic suppleness! How different from the
cramped motions of our London-bred children! You can see in a moment
those vigorous young muscles have strengthened themselves from the
cradle in the bracing air of the mountains⁠—⁠so fresh they are, so lithe, so
gracious, so lissom! I recognise there at once the true note of the Tyrol.”
As he spoke, the younger girl, playing roughly with the boy, gave him a
violent push which nearly sent him over into a neighbouring puddle. At
that, the elder sister clutched her hard by the wrist and gave her a good
shaking, observing at the same time in very familiar accents:
“Naow then, Mariar-Ann, if you do like that to ’Arry agin, I’ll tike you
stright in, an’ tell your mother.”
It was the genuine unmistakable Cockney dialect!
In an agony of injured nerves, Florian seized the elder girl by the collar
of her dress, and, holding her at arm’s-length, as one might do some
venomous reptile, demanded of her, sternly, in his severest tone: “Now,
where on earth did you ever learn English?”
The little Tyrolese, trembling violently in his grasp, stammered out in
deadly fear: “Wy, o’ course, in London.”
“Pa was a waiter at the Criterion,” the younger sister volunteered in a
shrill little voice from a safe distance; “and ma’s an Englishwoman. We’ve
come ’ere to retire. Pa’s tiken the farm. But we can’t none of us speak any
German.”

Florian relaxed his grasp, a dejected, dispirited, disappointed mannikin.
“Go, wretched little mudlark!” he exclaimed, with a frank gesture of
discomfiture, flinging her from him as he spoke. “There isn’t, there never
was, any objective Tyrol!”
The child retreated prudently to the safe shelter of the doorway, before
venturing on a repartee. Then she put out her tongue and took up a stone in
her hand. “Who are you a-callin’ a mudlark?” she answered, with the just
indignation of injured innocence. “If my pa was ’ere ’e’d punch yer
bloomin’ ’ead for yer.”
It ill became Florian Wood, that man of taste, to bandy words before the
eternal hills with social waifs from the slums of Drury Lane. He strode on
up the path in moody silence. It was some minutes, indeed, before he had
sufficiently recovered from this crushing blow to murmur in a subdued
voice: “What an incongruous circumstance!”
“Not so unusual as you’d suppose, though,” his companion answered
with a smile; for he knew the Tyrol. “There are no people on earth so
vagrant in their ways as the Tyrolese. They go away as pedlars, musicians,
or waiters; but when they’ve made their pile, almost without exception, they
come back in the end to their native valleys. I’ve more than once met
hunters or farmers in these upland glens who spoke to me in English, not
always without a tinge of American accent. Perhaps it’s not so much that
these people emigrate as that they always come back again. They think
other countries good enough to make money in, but the Zillerthal’s the one
place where they’d care to spend it.”
Florian answered nothing. He strode on, sore distressed. The only Tyrol
worth tuppence, he now knew to his cost, was the one he had erected,
anterior to experience, in his own imagination.

CHAPTER II

A FRESH ACQUAINTANCE

It was a steep pull up to the little village on the hill, which Florian had
selected by pure intuition for their immediate headquarters. But once they
had arrived there the glorious panorama which disclosed itself in one burst
to their enchanted eyes made them forget the fatigues of their long tramp to
reach it. The village was a tiny one, but comely and prosperous; composed
of great farm-houses with big boulders piled high on their shingled roofs to
keep them in place, and a quaint old church, whose tall and tapering spire
was prettily tiled with bright green slates, after the country fashion.
Moreover, what was more important just then to the footsore travellers, a
hospitable wirthshaus or village inn occupied a place of honour on the
small green in the centre. It was cheerful though homely, and clean in a
certain rough countrified way; and it faced due south, toward the sun and
the snow-fields. Florian saw at a glance there would be a ravishing outlook
from the bedroom windows; and Will Deverill, more practical, and better
accustomed to these out-of-the-way nooks, felt inclined to believe they
might count at least on decent beds, plain wholesome fare, fresh trout from
the stream, and sweet venison from the mountains.
The name over the door was Andreas Hausberger. Will entered the inn
with a polite inclination of the head, and inquired in his very best German
of the first man he saw if he could speak with the landlord.
“I am he,” the stranger said, drawing himself up with much dignity.
“This inn is my Schloss. My name is Hausberger.”
Will Deverill surveyed him with a critical air. He had seen such men
before; they are not uncommon in the rural Tyrol. Tall, powerful, big-built,
with a resolute face and a determined mien, he looked like a man well able
to keep order among the noisy frequenters of his rustic tavern. For the wirth
or innkeeper of these remote villages is often, after the priest, the most
important personage of the little community: he represents the temporal as
the pfarrer represents the spiritual authority. The owner of four or five
horses, the entertainer of strange guests, the dispenser of liquor to the
countryside, the organiser of festivals, marriage-feasts, and dances, the
proprietor of the one club and assembly-room of the village, the wirth is
necessarily a man of mark and of local position, beyond anything that is
usual with his kind elsewhere. In the communal council his voice is
supreme; the parlour is his court-house: he settles all quarrels, attests all

deeds, arranges all assemblies, and assists, as a matter of course, at all rural
ceremonies.
“Can we have rooms here for a week?” Will inquired, still in German.
The landlord led them upstairs and showed them two bedrooms on the
first floor, roughly furnished, but neat, and, as Florian had foreseen, with a
glorious outlook. Will proceeded to inquire, as interpreter for the party,
about various details of price, possibilities as to meals, excursions in the
neighbourhood, and other practical matters. The landlord answered all in
the same self-respecting and almost haughty tone as before, assuring him in
few words as to the excellence of the bread and the meat, the cleanliness of
the beds, the soundness of the beer, and the advantages and respectability of
his establishment in general. “You will be as well here,” he said, summing
up, “as in New York or London⁠—⁠a little less luxury, perhaps, but quite as
much real and solid comfort.”
“What does he say?” Florian asked, languidly, as the landlord finished.
For, though in his capacity as man of culture, the philosopher of taste was
prepared to give a critical opinion offhand at any moment, on Goethe or
Heine, the Minnesänger, or the Nibelungenlied, he was innocent of even the
faintest acquaintance with the German language. Two words in it amply
served his turn: with wieviel and ja wohl, he made the tour of the
Fatherland.
Will explained to him in brief, and in the vulgar tongue, the nature of
the landlord’s somewhat high-flown commendations.
By way of answer Florian unslung his knapsack, which he flung on the
bed with as much iron determination as his height permitted. “This’ll do,”
he said, decisively⁠—⁠this time in his character as the man of impulse. “I like
the house; I like the place; I like the view; I like the landlord. He’s a
dignified looking old boy in his way, the landlord, with that independence
of mien and that manly chivalry which forms an integral part of my mental
conception of the Tyrolese character. No bowing and scraping there; no
civilised flunkeydom. And that scar on his face, you observe; what a history
it conceals: some free fight on the hills, no doubt, or some tussle with a
wounded bear in his native forest!”
“Wal, no; not pre-cisely that,” the landlord answered, in very Teutonic
English, strangely tinged with an under-current of a most Western flavour.
“I got that mark in a scrimmage one day on a Mississippi steamer. It was a
pretty hard fight, with a pretty hard lot, too⁠—⁠he was a real rough

customer⁠—⁠one of these professional monte-sharpers that go up and down
on the boats on the lookout for flats; but I settled him, anyway. He didn’t
want another when we’d squared accounts over that gash on my face. He
retired into private life at the St Louis hospital for the next few voyages.”
Poor Florian collapsed. This was too, too much! He sank on the sofa
with a dejected face, drew a very long breath from the innermost depths of
his manly bosom, and at last gasped out with a violent effort: “Are there no
Tyrolese in the Tyrol at all, then?”
The landlord smiled, a restrained and cautious smile. He was a self-
contained sort of man, very large and roomy. “Why, I’m a Tyroler, myself,”
he said, opening the second window, and bustling about the room a
little⁠—⁠“as Tyrolese as they make ’em; but I’ve been around the world a bit,
for all that, both in Europe and America.”
“You play the zither?” Will inquired, guessing at once what quest was
most likely to have taken him there.
The landlord shook his head. “No; I sing,” he answered. “It was in
charge of a troupe that I went over the water. You know Ludwig Rainer?”
“Who has an hotel on the Achensee?” Will replied. “The well-known
jodel singer? Yes; I’ve stayed there and heard him.”
“Wal, he set the thing going,” Herr Andreas Hausberger continued, still
bustling about the room; “he took over a troupe to New York and
Chicawgo. The first time, he fell in with a pack of scoundrels who cheated
him of everything he made by the trip. The second time, he came back with
a few hundred dollars. The third time, he got into a very good thing, and
made money enough out of his tour to start the Seehof. So I followed suit,
but I only saved enough on my first venture to set me up here in this house
in the village. It’s a one-horse affair for a man like me. Next time, I hope I
shall make a little capital to start a big hotel for foreign tourists and kur-
guests at Meran or Innsbruck.”
“Then you mean to go again?” Will Deverill asked, sitting down.
“Why, certainly,” the landlord answered, retreating to the door, “as soon
as ever I can get another good troupe together again.” And with a
ceremonious bow, like a courtly gentleman that he was, he retired
downstairs to superintend the preparation of those fresh mountain trout he
had promised them for dinner.
As soon as he was gone, Florian raised himself on one elbow like a
startled butterfly, with an air of studious vacancy, and stared hard at Will

Deverill. “What an extraordinary country,” he murmured, with a pensive
sigh. “It’s Babel reversed. Everybody seems to speak and understand every
European language. The very babes and sucklings call one names as one
passes, in vile gutter English. It’s really quite uncanny. Who’d have
thought, now, of meeting in an out-of-the-way lost corner of earth like this,
a village innkeeper who’s a man of the world, a distinguished traveller, an
accomplished linguist, and an intelligent impresario? The ways of
Providence are truly mysterious! What a place to bury such a shining light!
Why dump him down so, in this untrodden valley?”
“Oh, it’s not by any means such a singular case as you suppose,” Will
answered, looking up from the knapsack he was engaged in
unpacking⁠—⁠“above all, in the Zillerthal. I’ve never been here before
myself, but I’ve always been told in other parts of the Tyrol that the
Zillerthalers, men and girls, are every one of them born musicians. And as
for our landlord here, the Tyrolese wirth is always a man of light and
leading in his own society. He opposes the priest, and heads the liberal
party. All the popular leaders in the war of independence in the Tyrol were
monks or innkeepers. Andreas Hofer, himself, you know, had an inn of his
own in the Passer valley.”
“Ah, to be sure,” Florian ejaculated, in an acquiescent tone of a peculiar
calibre, which showed his friend at once he hadn’t the remotest idea who
Andreas Hofer was, or why one should be expected to know anything about
him. Now, want of knowledge on such a point is, of course, most natural
and pardonable in a stranger; but there was no sufficient reason, Will
Deverill thought, for Florian’s pretence at its possession where he really
knew nothing. That, however, was poor Florian’s foible. He couldn’t bear to
have it thought he was ignorant of anything, from mathematics or music to
esoteric Buddhism. If a native of Siberia had addressed him casually in the
Ostiak dialect of the Tungusian language, Florian would have nodded and
smiled a non-committing assent, as though Ostiak had always been his
mother-tongue, and he had drunk in Tungusian at his nurse’s bosom.
“You know who Andreas Hofer was, of course?” Deverill went on,
persistently. He was a devil of a fellow for not letting you off when he
caught you out in an innocent little piece of social pretension, was Deverill.
Florian, thus hard pressed, found himself compelled to do what he hated
most in the world⁠—⁠confess his ignorance. “I remember the gentleman’s
respected name, of course!” he said, dubiously, with a sickly smile and a

little forced pleasantry; “but his precise claims to distinction, as Men of the
Time puts it in its cheerful circular, entirely escape my memory for the
moment.”
“He was the leader of the spontaneous Tyrolese peasant movement, you
know, for the expulsion of the French and their Bavarian allies in 1808 or
thereabouts,” Will went on, still unpacking. “Napoleon caught him at last,
and had him shot at Mantua. You’ll see his tomb when you go to Innsbruck,
and lots of other mementos of him all over the country everywhere. He
pervades the place. He’s the national hero, in fact⁠—⁠the martyr of
independence⁠—⁠a sort of later and more historical William Wallace.”
“Dear me, yes; how stupid of me!” Florian cried, clapping his hand to
his head in a sudden burst of pretended recollection. “It comes back to me
now, of course. Good old Andreas Hofer! How could I ever forget him? The
Tyrolese William Tell! The Hampden of the Alps! The undaunted
Caractacus of these snow-clad mountains!”
Deverill pulled off his coat. “If I were you,” he said, drily, “instead of
rhapsodising here, I’d go into my own room, have a jolly good wash, and
get ready for dinner. We must have walked about twenty-two miles since we
got out at Jenbach, and this bracing air gives one a positively Gargantuan
appetite.”
Florian roused himself with a yawn, for though vigorous enough for his
size, he was a lazy creature, and when once he sat down it was with
difficulty he could be prevailed upon to put himself in motion again. Ten
minutes later they were seated at the white-covered table in the tidy little
salon, doing the fullest justice to the delicious broiled trout, the foaming
amber ale, the fresh laid eggs, and the excellent home-made bread,
provided, according to promise, by Herr Andreas Hausberger.

CHAPTER III

WITHIN SIGHT OF A HEROINE

Next morning early, aroused by the cloister bell, Will Deverill rose, and
looked out of his window. Oh, such an exquisite day! In that clear, crisp air
the summits of the Floitenspitze, the Löffler, and the Turnerkamp glistened
like diamonds in the full morning sunlight. ’Twas a sight to rejoice his
poetic soul. For Will Deverill, though too modest to give himself airs, like
Florian, was a poet by birth, and a journalist by trade. Nature had designed
him for an immortal bard; circumstances had turned him into an occasional
leader-writer. He stood there entranced for many minutes together. He had
pushed the leaded window open wide when he first rose, and the keen
mountain air blew in at it most refreshingly. All, all was beautiful. He
looked out on the fresh green pastures, the deep glen below, the white
stream in its midst, the still whiter tops of the virgin mountains beyond it. A
stanza for his new poem rose spontaneous in his mind as he leaned his arms
on the low sill and gazed out upon the great glaciers:

“I found it not where solemn Alps and grey
Draw crimson glories from the new-born day,
Nor where huge sombre pines loom overhanging
Niagara’s rainbow spray.”

He was just feeling in his pocket for a pencil to jot down the rough draft
of these few lines, when of a sudden, at the window in the next room at the
side, what should he see but Florian’s pale face peeping forth most
piteously.
“What’s the matter? Haven’t you slept?” Will inquired of his
disconsolate friend with a sympathetic nod.
The epicurean philosopher shook a sad, slow head with a painfully
cheerful air of stoical resignation. “Not a wink since three o’clock,” he
answered, gloomily. “Those dreadful creatures have bothered me without
ceasing.”
“Surely,” Will began, somewhat surprised, “not⁠——”
Florian shook his head wearily. “No, no; not them,” he murmured with
melancholy emphasis. “I don’t mind about them. They, at least, are silent,
and, besides, if you like, you can get up and catch them. Bells, bells! my
dear fellow; bells, bells, all the morning. They’ve been tinkling in my ear

every blessed minute since the clock struck three. It’s unendurable,
horrible.”
“Oh, the cow-bells!” Will answered, laughing. “Why, for my part, I like
them. They’re a feature of the place; they sound so countrified. I hardly
hear them at all, or if I hear them, they come to me drowsily through the
haze of my dreams like the murmur of water or a nurse’s lullaby. I find
them, to tell you the truth, positively soothing. Besides,” he added,
mischievously, with a malicious little smile, “in such a village as this, who
cares where he sleeps, or whether he sleeps at all? He should be able to
subsist here on scenery and the affections.”
At the words, Florian’s head disappeared incontinently. That, surely,
was the unkindest cut of all. Thus convicted out of his own mouth, by his
familiar friend, he could but retire abashed to complete his toilet. That
Deverill should have slept all night long, while he lay awake, and tossed,
and turned, and wished ill to the whole ill-omened race of cows, was bad
enough in all conscience; but that he should pretend he liked those
disgusting bells was nothing short of atrocious.
He descended a little later to the homely parlour. Will was down there
before him, and had succeeded in ferreting out an old violin from a corner
cupboard. He was musical, was Will⁠—⁠not, to be sure, in the grand
perceptive and critical way, like Florian himself, who played no instrument
and understood all perfectly, but, after the inferior fashion of the mere
dexterous executant, who possesses a certain physical suppleness and
deftness of fingers to elicit from dumb strings the most delicate fancies of a
Mendelssohn or a Chopin. In pursuance of this lesser gift of his⁠—⁠“the
common faculty of the fiddler,” as Florian called it⁠—⁠Will was just then
engaged by the open window in playing over to himself a pretty little song
by some unknown composer. He played it very well, too, Florian admitted,
condescendingly; Will had a capital ear, indeed, and was not without feeling
of a sort, for the finer touches in musical composition⁠—⁠up to a certain
point, you know; not quite, of course, to the high and delicate level of
Florian’s own cultivated and refined perceptions. It was a charming piece,
however⁠—⁠a very charming piece⁠—⁠and, after a while, Will began singing
the words to it. Florian listened with pleasure and a forgiving smile to the
clever twists and turns of that well-arranged melody.
As he stood there, listening, a little behind, one impressive forefinger
held up in an attitude of discriminative attention, he was aware of two

voices in the street outside catching up the tune naturally, and fitting it as if
in sport to shapeless syllables of their own invention. They were women’s
voices, too, young and rich and powerful; and what was odder still, to
Florian’s immense surprise, they took up their proper parts as second and
third in a concerted piece, like trained musicians. Strange to find such
finished vocalists in a mere peasant hamlet!⁠—⁠but, there, no doubt they were
some of Herr Hausberger’s Transatlantic performers. Florian moved closer
to the window to observe the unknown but silvery-tongued strangers. As he
did so, two plump and rosy-cheeked mountain lasses, in homespun kirtles,
fled, blushing and giggling, with their hands to their mouths, away from the
close scrutiny of the foreign Herrschaft. Accustomed as he was by this time
to marvellous incongruities in this land of surprises, Florian could hardly
believe his own eyes when he further observed that the two girls with the
divine voices were driving cows home from the pasture to the milking shed.
Great heavens, yes! there was no gainsaying it. Shade of Wagner,
incredible! The accomplished vocalists whose fine sense of melody so
delighted his acute and critical ear were nothing but a pair of common
country milkmaids!
Will Deverill, too, had risen, and, with a friendly nod, was gazing out
appreciation at his unknown accompanists. Florian turned to him, all
amazement. “They must have practised it before,” he cried. “They must
know it all of old. It must certainly be one of their own national pieces.”
“Oh, no,” the poet replied in a very confident voice. “They can’t
possibly have heard it. It’s quite, quite new. I’m sure about that. It’s never
yet been published.”
“But, my dear fellow,” Florian exclaimed, with much argumentative
heat, “I assure you, none but the most instructed musicians could possibly
take up the right chords like that, and sing them second and third, without
having practised them beforehand. Allow me to know something of the
musical art. Even Patti herself⁠——”
“Why, the song’s my own,” Will broke in, much amused, and unable to
restrain himself. “I ought to know; it was I who wrote it.”
“The words! ah, yes, to be sure; the words are nothing. They didn’t sing
them, of course; ’twas the melody they caught at. And the melody, I venture
to assert, without fear of contradiction⁠—⁠the melody, from the peculiar way
it modulates into the sub-dominant, must certainly be one of their own love
songs.”

“But I composed the tune too,” Will made answer with a quiet smile.
“It’s never been played before. It came up into my head in the railway
carriage yesterday, and seeing this old fiddle in the cupboard this morning, I
thought I’d try it over before scoring it down, just to hear how it sounded.”
“You wrote it!” Florian repeated, dazzled and stunned at the news. “You
compose as well as rhyme! You set your own songs to music, do you? Well,
upon my soul, Deverill, I hadn’t till this moment the slightest idea you had
such an accomplishment.”
“Oh, I’m only a beginner,” Will answered, with a faint blush, laying
down the violin,⁠—⁠“or rather an amateur, for I’ve always dabbled in it. But
I’ve only published one song. I just strum to amuse myself. Good morning,
Herr Hausberger; what an exquisite day! We’d better take advantage of it
for a climb up the Rauhenkopf.”
The landlord, dish in hand, bowed his courteous and courtly bow. There
was deference in it, without a tinge of servility. Florian noted with
approbation that mixture of independence and a just self-respect which
formed a component part of his preconceived idea of the Tyrolese character.
Andreas Hausberger was “right,” because he was very much as Florian
would have pictured him. “Yes; a very good day for the ascent,” the
landlord said, quietly. “We will put up some lunch⁠—⁠cold meat and Pilsener.
You’ll get a fine view, if you start in good time, over the Zementhal
glaciers.”
Florian sat down to the table, a trifle crestfallen; but the poached eggs
were excellent, and the coffee fragrant; and he consoled himself for the
cow-bells and the mishap about the song by the reflection that, after all,
these idyllic milkmaids, with the voice of a prima donna and the manners of
Arcadia, were in exact accordance with the operatic ideal of his own
imagined Tyrol. They sang like the Chorus of Happy Peasants; they
behaved as the mountain lass of poetry ought always to behave, and as the
mountain lass of reality often utterly fails to do.
That morning on the Rauhenkopf was to Florian a day of unmixed
delights. He was At Home with Nature. In a vague sort of way, without
troubling himself much to know anything about them, the town-bred
philosopher loved the fragrant fields, the beautiful flowers, the mossy rocks,
the bright birds, the chirping insects. And Will Deverill knew them
all⁠—⁠their names, and where to find them. The ragged, sweet-scented pinks
still loitered late in deep clefts of the glacier-worn rock; a few stray sky-

blue gentians still starred the rich patches of Alpine pasture; emperors and
orange-tips still flaunted their gaudy wings in full autumn sunshine. Florian
drank in all these things with pure sensuous delight; the sweet sounds of the
fields, the smell of tedded kine filled his æsthetic soul, not so much with
direct pleasure, as with some faint afterglow of literary reminiscence.
At one of the little alp-huts among the higher pastures, Will Deverill
murmured a cheerful “Guten Morgen,” as he passed, to a buxom peasant
lass in a woollen kirtle, who stood busy at her churn by the door of her
châlet. The girl curtseyed, and looked back at them with such a good-
humoured smile that Florian, as an admirer of female beauty, couldn’t resist
the temptation of standing still for a moment to take a good long gaze at
her. “What’s she doing up here alone?” he asked at last, turning curiously to
Will, as the girl still smiled at him. “Does she come up here every day? It’s
a fearful long pull for her. But then⁠—⁠this charming air! such strength! such
agility!”
“Why, she lives here,” Will answered, surprised that anyone shouldn’t
know what to him was such an obvious and familiar fact. “She doesn’t
come up at all, except once in the spring; and in autumn she goes down
again. It must be nearly time for her to go down now, I should say. There’s
not much fodder left in these upper alps here.”
“Lives here!” Florian exclaimed, taken aback. “What?⁠—⁠and sleeps here
as well? You don’t mean to say she sleeps in that little wooden box there?”
“Certainly. She’s a sennerin, you know; it’s her business to do it. All the
alp girls live like that; they’ve been born and brought up to it.”
In his innermost soul, Florian was dying to know what manner of wild
beast a sennerin might be⁠—⁠being undecided in his own mind as to whether
it was most probably the name of a race, a religion, a caste, or a profession.
But it would have been treason to his principles to confess this fact, so he
compromised with his curiosity by murmuring blandly in reply, “Oh, ay, to
be sure, a sennerin! I might have guessed it! Do you think now, Deverill, if
we asked her very nicely, she’d let us go in and inspect her châlet?”
“I’m sure she would,” Will answered, half repressing a smile. “They see
so little of any outsiders while they’re up here on their alps that they’re only
too glad, as a rule, when a stranger visits them. We’ll give her a couple of
kreuzers for a glass of milk; that’ll serve as an introduction.”
He raised his hat jauntily, and approached the hut with a few words of
apology. The sennerin smiled in return, bobbed, curtseying low, and

welcomed them affably to her hospitable shelter. After a minute’s parley
with Will, the good-humoured young woman brought out a jug of fresh
milk, still frothy from the cow, and poured it out for them liberally in a blue
stoneware mug. Will drank his off at a draught; Florian hated milk, but as
admirer of female beauty⁠—⁠she was a good-looking wench⁠—⁠he gulped it
down to the dregs without even a grimace, and handed the mug back again.
Then Deverill talked for a while with their sunburnt entertainer in that
unknown tongue which Florian didn’t understand; though he could see from
their laughing faces and their quick tones of repartee that she was a merry
brown lass, shy and bashful indeed before the foreign gentlefolk, but frank
and fearless for all that as his soul could wish, and absolutely free from the
absurd conventionalities and mauvaise honte of the women who dwell in
our too civilised cities. She was no more afraid of men than of oxen. Florian
liked that well. Here, at least, was true freedom; here, at least, was ancestral
simplicity of life; here the woman held her own on equal terms with the
man; here love was unfettered by law or by gold, untrammelled by those
hampering inconvenient restraints of parental supervision, society, or
priestcraft, which impede its true course in our too complex communities.
Florian’s lungs breathed freer in this rarified air: he had risen above the
zone of Mrs Grundy.
At the end of their brisk colloquy, which he followed but in part, the
sennerin, with a gesture of countrified courtesy, turned to the door with a
pretty smile and waved Florian into her châlet. “She says you may look
over it and welcome,” Will Deverill explained, interrupting. Florian,
nothing daunted, entered and gazed around. It was a rough log hut, divided
into two rooms by a wooden partition⁠—⁠a big one, with a door behind, for
the cows and calves; and a little one, with a door in front, for the sennerin’s
own bedchamber, kitchen, and parlour. The chief article of furniture seemed
to him to consist of a great black cauldron, suspended from a crane over the
open fireplace, and used⁠—⁠so Will assured him⁠—⁠as the principal utensil in
the manufacture of cheese. The fire itself blazed in a hole, dug roughly in
the floor of native turf; the edge of this hole, cut out into a rude seat, did
duty as sofa, couch, chair, and chimney-corner. Florian sniffed somewhat
dubiously. “And she sleeps here all alone?” he said, with a suppressed
shudder. This was Arcadian simplicity, he felt, with quite too much of the
bloom off.

“Yes; she sleeps here all alone,” Will answered, undisturbed. “Comes up
in May, when the snow first melts, and goes down in October, when it
begins to lie thick again.”
The sennerin, laughing aloud, confirmed his report with many nods and
shrugs, and much good-humoured merriment. It amused her to see the
stranger’s half-incredulous astonishment.
“And aren’t you frightened?” Florian asked, Will interpreting the
question for him.
The sennerin laughed the bare idea to scorn. “Why should I be?” she
exclaimed, brimming over with smiles of naïve surprise at such a grotesque
notion. “There are plenty more girls in all the other huts on the alps round
about. This hut’s Andreas Hausberger’s, and so are that and that. He owns
all these pastures; we come up and herd cows for him.”
“Isn’t it terribly lonely, though?” Florian inquired with open eyes,
reflecting silently to himself that after all there were advantages⁠—⁠of a
sort⁠—⁠in Bond Street.
“Lonely!” the sennerin cried, in her own country dialect. “We’ve no
time to be lonely. We have to mind the cows, don’t you see, worthy well-
born Herr, and give milk to the calves, and make cheese and butter, and
clean our pots and pans, and do everything ourselves for our food and
washing. I can tell you we’re tired enough when the day’s well over, and we
can creep into our loft, and fall asleep on the straw there.”
“And she has no Society?” Florian exclaimed, all aghast at the thought.
For to him the companionship of his brother man, and perhaps even more of
his sister woman, was a necessary of existence.
The girl’s eye brightened with an unwonted fire as Will explained the
remark to her. “Ah, yes,” she said half-saucily, with a very coquettish toss
of her pretty black head; “when Saturday night comes round then sure
enough our mountain lads climb up from the valley below to visit us. We
have Sunday to ourselves⁠—⁠and them⁠—⁠till Monday morning; for you know
the song says⁠—⁠” and she trilled it out archly in clear, quick notes⁠—

“With my pouch unhung,
And my rifle slung,
And away to my black-eyed alp-girl!”

She sang it expressively, in a rich full voice, far sweeter than could have
been expected from so stalwart a maiden. Florian saw an opportunity for
bringing out one stray phrase from his slender stock of German. “Das ist
schön,” he cried, clapping his hands; “sehr schön! So schön!” Then he
relapsed into his mother-tongue. “And you sing it admirably!”
Their evident appreciation touched the alp-girl’s vanity. Like most of
her class she had no false modesty. She broke out at once spontaneously
into another native song, with a wild free lilt, which exactly suited both her
voice and character. It was excellently rendered; even Florian, that stern
critic, admitted as much; and as soon as she ended both men clapped their
hands in sincere applause of her unpremeditated performance. The sennerin
looked down modestly when Will praised her singing. “Ah, you should just
hear Linnet!” she cried, in unaffected self-depreciation.
“And who’s Linnet?” Will asked, smiling at the girl’s perfect frankness.
“Oh, she’s one of Herr Hausberger’s cow-girls,” the sennerin answered,
with a little shake of her saucy head. “But you needn’t ask her; she’s a great
deal too shy; she won’t give you a chance; she never sings before
strangers.”
“That’s a pity,” Will replied, lightly, not much thinking what he said;
“for if she sings better than you, worthy friend, she must be well worth
hearing.”
The sennerin looked down again. Her ruddy cheek glowed ruddier.
Such praise from such lips discomposed her serenity. Will glanced at his
watch. “We must be going, Florian,” he said. “Half-past twelve already!
I’ve no coppers in my pocket. Have you anything you can offer this lady
gay for her agreeable entertainment?”
Florian pulled out his purse, and took from it gingerly a well-worn
twenty-kreuzer piece⁠—⁠one of those flimsy silvered shams which the
Austrian Government in its paternal stinginess imposes as money upon its
faithful lieges. The sennerin accepted it with a profusion of thanks, and
smothered the generous donor’s hand with unstinted kisses. So much
happiness may a man diffuse in this world of woe with a fourpenny bit,
bestowed in due season! But Florian mistook that customary symbol of
thanks on the alp-girl’s part for an expression of her most heart-felt personal
consideration; and not to be outdone when it came to idyllic courtship, he
lifted her hand in return to his own gracious lips and kissed it gallantly. Will
raised his hat and smiled, without commenting on this misconception, and

with a cheery “Auf wiedersehen!” they went on their way rejoicing once
more up the slopes of the mountain.

CHAPTER IV

ENTER LINNET

Lunch on the summit was delicious that day, and the view was glorious. But
when they returned in the evening to the inn at St Valentin⁠—⁠that was the
name of their village⁠—⁠and described to Andreas Hausberger how an alp-
girl had sung for them in a mountain hut, the wirth listened to the
description with a deprecatory smile, and then said with a little shrug: “Ah,
that was Philippina; she can’t do very much. Her high notes are too shrill.
You should just hear Linnet!”
“Is Linnet such a songstress then?” Florian cried, with that dubious
smile of his.
The wirth looked grave. “She can sing,” he said, pointedly. His dignity
was hurt by the young man’s half-sceptical, half-bantering tone. And your
Tyroler is above all things conservative of his dignity.
These repeated commendations of this unknown Linnet, however, with
her quaintly pretty un-German-sounding name, piqued the two
Englishmen’s curiosity in no small degree as to her personality and powers,
so that when the wirth next morning announced after breakfast, with a self-
satisfied smile, “Linnet’s coming down to-day,” Florian and Will looked
across at each other with one accord, and exclaimed in unison, “Ah, now
then, we shall see her!”
And, sure enough, about five o’clock that afternoon, as the strangers
were returning from a long stroll on the wooded heights that overhang the
village, they came unexpectedly, at a turn of the mountain footpath, where
two roads ran together, upon a quaint and picturesque Arcadian procession.
A long string of patient cows, in the cream-coloured coats of all Tyrolese
cattle, wound their way with cautious steps down the cobble-paved zig-
zags. A tinkling bell hung by a leather belt from the neck of each; garlands
of wild flowers festooned their horns; a group of peasant children assisted
at the rude pageant. In front walked a boy, with a wreath slung across his
right shoulder like a sash, leading the foremost cow most unceremoniously
by the horns; the rear was brought up by a pretty sunburnt girl, with a bunch
of soft pasque-flowers stuck daintily in her brown hair, and a nosegay of
bluebells peeping coquettishly out of her full round bosom. Though
vigorous-looking in figure, and bronzed in face by the sun and the open air,
she was of finer mould and more delicate fibre, Will saw at a glance, than
most of the common peasant women in that workaday valley. Her features

were full but regular; her mouth, though large and very rich in the lips (as is
often the case with singers), was yet rosy and attractive; her eyes were full
of fire, after the true Tyrolese fashion; her rounded throat, just then
trembling with song, had a waxy softness of outline in its curves and
quivers that betrayed in a moment a deep musical nature. For she was
singing as she went, to the jingling accompaniment of some thirty cow-
bells; and not even the sweet distraction of that rustic discord could hide
from Will Deverill’s quick, appreciative ear the fact that he stood here face
to face with a vocalist of rare natural gifts, and some homespun training.
He paused, behind the wall, as the procession wound round a long
double bend, and listened, all ears, to a verse or two of her simple but
exquisite music.
“This must be Linnet!” he cried at last, turning abruptly to Florian.
And the boy at the head of the procession, now opposite him by the
bend, catching at the general drift of the words with real Tyrolese
quickness, called out with a loud laugh to the singer just above: “Sagt er,
das musz ja Linnet seyn!” and then exploded with merriment at the bare
idea that the Herrschaft should have heard the name and fame of his
companion.
As for the girl herself, surprised and taken aback at this sudden
interruption, she stood still and hesitated. For a moment she paused, leaning
hard on the long stick with which she guided and admonished her vagrant
cows; then she looked up and drew a long breath, looked down and blushed,
looked up once more and smiled, looked down and blushed again. They had
overtaken her unawares where the paths ran together; but as each was
enclosed with a high wall of granite boulders, overgrown with brambles,
she had no chance of perceiving them till they were close upon her. She
broke off her song at once, and stood crimson-faced beside them.
“Ah, sing again!” Florian cried, folding two dainty palms in a rapture on
his breast, and putting his delicate head on one side in a transport of
enchantment “Why, Deverill, how she sings! what a linnet, indeed! and how
pretty she is, too! For the first time in my life, I really regret I can’t speak
German!”
The singer, looking up, all tremulous to have overheard this unfeigned
homage, made answer, to Florian’s equal delight and surprise, “I can speak
a little English.”

It would be more correct, perhaps, to put it that what she actually said,
was: “Ei kann schpiek a liddle Ennglisch”; but Florian, in his joy that any
means of inter-communication existed between them at all, paid small heed
at the time to these slight Teutonic defects in her delivery of our language.
“You can speak English!” he exclaimed, overjoyed, for it would have
been a real calamity to him to find a pretty girl in the place, with a beautiful
voice, and he unable to converse in any known tongue with her. “How
delightful! How charming! How quite too unexpected! I’m so glad to know
that! For had it been otherwise, I should really have had to learn German to
talk with you!”
This overstrained compliment, though it rose quite naturally to Florian’s
practised lips, and was far more genuine than a great deal of his talk, made
the girl blush and stammer with extreme embarrassment. She was
unaccustomed, indeed, to such lavish praise, above all from the gentlefolk.
Was the gnädige Herr making fun of her, she wondered? She grew hot and
uncomfortable. Fortunately for her self-possession, however, Will Deverill
intervened with a more practical remark. “You speak English, do you?” he
repeated. “That’s odd, in these parts. One would hardly have thought that!
How did you come to learn it?”
“My father was a guide,” the girl answered, slowly, making a pause at
each word, and picking her way with difficulty through the insidious pit-
falls of British pronunciation. (She called it fahder.) “He taked plenty
Ennglish gentlemen up the mountains before time. I learn so well from him,
as also from many of the Ennglish gentlemen. Then, too, I take lesson from
Herr Hausberger in winters, and from Ennglish young lady at the farm by
Martinsbrunn.”
Florian gazed at his companion with an agonised look of mingled alarm
and horror. “Do you know who she means?” he cried, seizing Will’s arm.
“This is too, too terrible! The girl on the hillside who sticks out her tongue!
that horrible little Cockney! She’ll teach this innocent child to say ‘naow,'
and ‘lidy'! At last I feel I have a mission in life. We must save her from this
fate! We must instruct her ourselves in pure educated English!”
“And how do you come to be called Linnet?” Will inquired with some
interest, a new light breaking in upon him. “That’s surely an English name.
Who was it first called you so?”
“An Ennglish gentleman when I was all quite small,” the girl replied,
with much difficulty, searching her phrases with studious care. “He stop at

my father’s hut on our alp many nights⁠—⁠I know not how man says it⁠—⁠so
must he go up the mountains. I sing to him often when he come down at
evening. My right name is called in German, Lina; but the gentleman, says
he, that I sing like a bird. A linnet, that is in Ennglish a singing-bird.
Therefore, Linnet he call me. The name please my father much, who make a
great deal of me; so from that time in forwards, all folk in the village call
me also Linnet.”
Will broke out into German. “They’re quite right,” he said, politely,
though with less ecstasy than Florian; “for you do indeed sing like a real
song-bird. I’m so sorry we interrupted you; pray go on with your song
again.”
But Linnet hung her head. “No, no,” she answered, hastily, in her own
native tongue, glad to find he spoke German. “I didn’t know I was
overheard. If I’d been singing for such as you, I’d not have chosen a little
country song like that. And besides”⁠—⁠she broke off suddenly, with a coy
wave of her brown hand, “I can’t sing before strangers the same as I can
before my own people.” And she tapped the hindmost heifer with her rod as
she spoke, to set the line in motion; for the cows, after their kind, had taken
advantage of the pause to put down their heads to the ground, and browse
placidly at the green weeds that bordered the wayside.
At one touch of her wand the bells tinkled once more; the long string
got under way; the children by the side recommenced their loud shouts of
rustic merry-making. For the return of the cows from the alp is a little
festival in the villages; it ends the long summer’s work on the mountain
side, and brings back the unmarried girls from their upland exile to their
homes in the valley. Linnet drove her herd now, however, more soberly and
staidly. The free merriment of Arcadia had faded out of the ceremony. One
touch of civilisation had dispelled the dream. She knew she was observed;
she knew the two strangers were waiting to hear if she would trill forth her
wild song again, for they followed close at her heels, talking rapidly among
themselves in their own language⁠—⁠so rapidly, indeed, that Linnet could
hardly snatch here and there by the way a single word of their earnest
conversation. Once or twice she looked back at them, half-timidly, half-
provokingly.
“Sing again!” Florian cried, clasping his hands in entreaty.
But the wayward alp-girl only laughed her coy refusal.

“No, no,” she said in her patois, with a little shake of her beautiful head;
“that must not be so. I sing no more now. I must drive home my cows. They
are tired from the mountains.”
“But, I say,” Florian cried at last, bursting in upon his mountain nymph
with this very colloquial and unpoetic adjuration; “look here, you know,
Fräulein Linnet, you say you learn English from our landlord, Herr
Hausberger. Now, what does he want to teach you for?”
Linnet turned round to him with a naïve air of unaffected surprise.
“Why, when he teach me Ennglish songs,” she said, “I will know what
mean the words. Also, I have remembered a little⁠—⁠a very little⁠—⁠since the
Ennglish gentleman teach me at my father’s. Besides, too, shall I not need it
when I go to Enngland?”
“Go to England!” Florian repeated, all amazed at the frank remark. She
seemed to take it for granted they must know all her plans. “When you go
to England! Oh, he means to take you there, then! You’re one of his troupe,
I suppose; or you’re going to be one.”
“I am not gone away yet,” Linnet answered, not a little abashed to find
herself the centre of so much unwonted interest; “but I go next time; I will
sing with his band. All summers, I stop on the mountain and milk; with the
winter, come I down to the house to practise.”
“But you don’t mean to say,” Will put in, in German (it was easier so for
Linnet to answer him), “he lets a singer like you live out by herself in a
châlet on the hills with the cows all summer?”
Linnet held up her hands, palm outward, with a pretty little gesture of
polite deprecation. Her movements were always naturally graceful. “Why
not?” she said, brightly, in German, with no little suppressed merriment at
his astonished face. “That’s Andreas Hausberger’s plan; he believes in that
way; he calls it his system. He says we Zillerthalers owe our beautiful
voices⁠—⁠for they tell us we can sing a great deal better than the people in
any other valley about⁠—⁠to our open-air life on the very high mountains.
The air there is thin, and it suits our throats, he says.” She clasped her hand
to her own as she spoke, that beautiful, well-developed, clear-toned organ,
with a natural gesture of unconscious reverence. “It develops them⁠—⁠that’s
his word; he believes there’s nothing like it. Entwickelung; entwickelung! I
get more good, he thinks, for my voice in the summer on the alp than I get
from all my lessons in the winter in the valley. For the throat itself comes

first⁠—⁠that’s what Andreas holds⁠—⁠and afterwards the teaching. Not for
worlds would he let me miss my summer life on the mountains.”
“And how long has he been training you?” Will inquired with real
interest. This was so strange a page of life thus laid open before him.
“Oh, for years and years, gnädige Herr,” Linnet answered, shyly, for so
much open attention on the young man’s part made her awkwardly self-
conscious. “Ever since my father died, he has always been teaching me.”
“Has your father been dead long?” Will inquired.
Linnet crossed herself devoutly. “He was killed eight years ago on the
20th of August last,” she said, looking up as she spoke towards the forest-
clad mountains. “May Our Dear Lady and all holy saints deliver his
honoured soul from the fires of purgatory!”
“But your mother’s alive still, I suppose, Fräulein,” Florian put in with a
killing smile; he had been straining his ears, and was delighted to have
caught the general drift of the conversation.
“Yes; thanks to the Blessed Virgin, my mother live still,” Linnet
answered in English. “And I keep her comfortable, as for a widow woman,
from that which Andreas Hausberger pay me for the summer, as also for the
singing. But for what, mein Herr, do you make to call me Fräulein? Do you
wish to mock at me? I am only an alp-girl, and I am call just Linnet.”
She flushed as she spoke, and turned hastily to Will. “Tell him,” she said
in German, with an impatient little toss of one hand towards Florian, “that it
isn’t pretty of him to make fun of poor peasant girls like that. Why does he
call me such names? He knows very well I am no real Fräulein.”
Florian raised his hat at once in his dimpled small hand, with that
courtly bow and smile so much admired in Bond Street. “Pardon me,” he
said, with more truth and feeling than was usual with him; “you have a
superb voice; with a gift like that, you are a Fräulein indeed. It extorts our
homage. Heaven only knows to what height it may some day lead you.”

CHAPTER V

THE WIRTH’S THEORY

In the evening, while they dined, the landlord came in to see how they
fared, and wish them good appetite: ’tis the custom with distinguished
guests in the Tyrol. The moment he entered, Florian, all agog, attacked him
at once on the subject of their wonderful find that afternoon on the hillside.
“Well, Herr Hausberger,” he cried in his high-flown way, “we’ve seen and
heard your Linnet⁠—⁠heard her warbling her native wood-notes wild, to the
tune of her own cow-bells on her lonely mountains. Now, what do you
mean, sir, by turning out a divine singer like that⁠—⁠I’m a musical critic
myself, and I know what I’m talking about⁠—⁠what do you mean by turning
her out to make butter and cheese in a solitary hut on an Alpine pasture? It’s
sheer desecration, I tell you⁠—⁠sheer wicked desecration; there’s nothing,
almost, that girl couldn’t do with her voice. She’s a genius⁠—⁠a prodigy; she
ought to be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every
day on champagne and turtle. And you, sir⁠—⁠you send her up to herd cows
all alone, in an inclement clime, on a barren hill-top!”
Andreas Hausberger gazed at him with a self-contained smile that was
extremely characteristic. He bowed a sarcastic bow which Florian
misinterpreted for polite subservience. “Are you running this show or am
I?” he asked, after a fresh pause, with a quaint reminiscence of his Western
experience.
“You are, undoubtedly,” Florian answered, taken aback at this
unexpected assault. “But you ought to run it, all the same, on rational and
humane and intelligent principles. You owe this girl’s voice, as a delight and
a treasure, to US, the enlightened and critical connoisseurs of two eager
continents. Nature produced it that we might enjoy it. It was intended to
give us some of those exquisite moments of artistic pleasure which are the
sole excuse creative caprice can plead for the manifold defects of the
Universe.”
Andreas Hausberger looked down at him with a half-pitying curl on
those stern thin lips of his. Florian had attacked him lightly where his
position was strongest. “That’s all right,” he said, slowly, with a chilly
drawl⁠—⁠’twas his favourite expression. “And do you think then,” he went
on, bursting forth almost scornfully, in spite of his outward deference, “we
Zillerthalers get our fine singing voices and our musical ears by pure
chance and accident? Not so, you may be sure of it. It’s no mere

coincidence that our men and women can almost without exception sing
like birds from their childhood upwards by the light of Nature. What gives
them this power? Why, they live their lives long, in summer especially, in
the thin clear atmosphere of our higher mountains. There isn’t much sour-
stuff in it⁠—⁠what do you call it in English?⁠—⁠oh, oxygen, don’t you? Wal,
there isn’t much oxygen in that thin upper air⁠—⁠rarefied, I think you
say⁠—⁠and therefore they’re obliged to fill their lungs well and expand their
chests”⁠—⁠he swelled himself out as he spoke, and showed off his own
splendid girth to the fullest advantage⁠—⁠“and that gives them large
reservoirs and rich, pure-toned voices.”
“I never thought of that before,” Will Deverill interposed, much struck
by the landlord’s plausible reasoning. “I suppose that’s why mountain races,
like the Welsh and the Tyrolese, are so often musical. The rarefied air must
tend to strengthen and develop the larynx.”
“No; you never thought of that before,” Andreas Hausberger echoed.
“You haven’t had to think of it. And you haven’t had to select and train a
choir of our Tyrolese peasants. But I have thought of it for years, and
satisfied myself it’s true. Is it for nothing, do you suppose, that on our cold
mountain tops the vocal chords, as they say, are braced up and tightened? Is
it for nothing that in that clear, pure, limpid air the very nerves of the ear,
strained hard to catch quickly at distant sounds, are exercised and educated?
Do you think, if I wanted to pick out voices for a musical troupe, I would
go for them to Holland, or to Lombardy, or to Hamburg? No, no; I would go
right away to the gründe there, the upper forks of the Zillerthal, in the
crystal air just below the glaciers, and pick out my best singers from the
cow-boys and the alp-girls.”
He spoke of what he knew and had long reflected upon. Acquaintance
with his subject supplied in part the unimportant deficiencies of his English
vocabulary; and, besides, he had said the same things before a dozen times
over, to other English travellers.
“Perhaps you may be right,” Florian responded, blandly, as the wirth
paused for breath in his eager harangue. It was a way of Florian’s to be
bland when he saw he was getting the worst of an argument.
“Right!” Andreas Hausberger repeated. “Never mind about that! You’d
know I was right if only you’d seen as much of these people as I have. Look
here, Mr Wood, you say it’s desecration to send a girl like Linnet after
butter and cheese in a sennerin’s hut on the lonely mountains. You say I

owe her voice as a treasure to humanity. Wal, I acknowledge the debt, and I
try to discharge it to the best of my ability. I send her to the hills⁠—⁠the free
open hills⁠—⁠where she will breathe fresh air, develop her throat and lungs,
eat wholesome food, grow strong and brown and hearty. If I clothed her in
purple and fine linen, as you wish, and fed her every day on champagne and
turtle, do you really imagine I’d be doing her a good turn? I’d be ruining
her voice for her. In the summer, she gains breath and good health on the
grassy mountains; in the winter, she gets training and advice and assistance
from Lindner and myself, and whatever other teachers we can find in the
Zillerthal.”
“I surrender at discretion,” Florian answered, with a yawn, rising up and
flinging his small person lazily on the home-made sofa. “I admit your
contention. You interest me strangely. Your peasants and your country girls
have finely developed ears and capital voices. No doubt you’re correct in
attributing these splendid gifts to the clearness of the atmosphere and the
wild life of the mountains. I’m a musical critic in London myself, and I
know what a voice is the moment I hear it. Indeed, after all, what does it
matter in the end if these divine creatures spend a joyless life for years in
sordid and squalid surroundings, provided only, when they burst forth at last
in the full effulgence of their musical prime, they afford us, who can
appreciate them, and for whose sake they exist, one vivid thrill of pure
artistic enjoyment?” And he stroked his own smooth and girlish cheek with
one plump hand, lovingly.
“You’re a musical critic, are you?” Andreas Hausberger repeated, with
marked interest, disregarding the last few words of Florian’s flowing
rhapsody. “Then you shall hear Linnet sing. You can say after that whether
I’m right in my system or not.” He opened the door hastily. “Linnet,
Linnet,” he called out in the Tyrolese dialect, “come in here at once. I want
the Herrschaft to hear you singing.”
For a minute after he spoke, there was a flutter and a rustling at the door
outside; somebody seemed to be pushing some unwilling person bit by bit
along the passage. A murmur of whispered voices in the local dialect floated
faintly to Will’s ears. “You must!” “But I can’t.” “You shall!” “I won’t.”
“He says you are to.” “Ah, no; I’m ashamed! Not before those gentlemen!”
In the end, as it seemed, the first voice had its way. The door opened
brusquely, and Linnet, all trembling, her face in her hands, and crimson
with shame, was pushed bodily forward by unseen arms into the strangers’

presence. For a moment she stood there like a frightened child. Will’s cheek
burned hot with sympathetic tingling. Florian leaned back philosophically
as he lay, and regarded this pretty picture of beauty in distress with
observant complacency. She was charming, so, to be sure! That red flush
became her.
“Sing to the gentlemen,” Andreas Hausberger said, calmly, in a tone of
command. “Take your hands from your face at once; don’t behave like a
baby.”
He spoke in German, but Florian followed him all the same. ’Twas
delicious to watch this pretty little comedy of rustic ingenuousness.
“Oh, I can’t!” Linnet cried, all abashed, removing her hands for a
second from her burning cheeks, and clasping them hard on her throbbing
breast for one fiery moment before she clapped them up hastily again. “To
bid one like this! It’s so hard! It’s so dreadful!”
“Don’t ask her just now,” Will Deverill put in pleadingly. “One can see
she has such a natural shrinking and disinclination at first. Some other
night, perhaps. When we’ve been here a little longer, she may be less afraid
of us.”
Linnet let her hand drop once more, and gave him a grateful glance,
sidling away towards the door like a timid child in her misery. But Andreas
Hausberger, for his part, was not so to be put off. “No, no,” he said, sternly,
fixing his eye with a determined gaze on the poor shrinking girl; “she must
sing if I tell her to. That’s all right. This shyness is absurd. How can she
ever appear on a platform, I should like to know, before a couple of hundred
people, if she won’t sing here when she’s told before just you two
Englishmen? Do as I bid you, Linnet! No nonsense, my girl! Stand here by
the table, and give us ‘The Bride of Hinter-Dux.’ ”
Thus authoritatively commanded, poor Linnet took her stand where
Andreas Hausberger motioned her, steadied herself with one trembling little
fist on the edge of the table, raised her eyes to the ceiling away from the
two young men, and, drawing a deep breath, with her throat held out and
her mouth opened tremulously, began to trill forth, in her rich, silvery voice,
a deep bell-like song of her own native mountain. For the first minute or
two she was nervous, and quivered and paused unduly; after awhile,
however, inborn artistic instinct overcame her nervousness: she let her eyes
drop and rest in a flash once or twice on Will Deverill’s. They were kindly
eyes, Will’s; they reassured and encouraged her. “Bravo!” they seemed to

say; “you’re rendering it admirably.” Emboldened by his friendly glance,
she took heart and went through with it. Towards the end, her courage and
self-possession returned, for, like all Tyrolese, she was brave and self-
reliant in her inmost soul, though shy at first sight, and bashful on the
surface. The two last stanzas she sang to perfection. As she finished, Will
looked up and said simply, “Thank you; that was beautiful, beautiful.” But
Florian clapped his hands in obtrusive applause. “Well done!” he cried;
“well done! you have given us such a treat. We can forgive Herr Hausberger
now for insisting on a performance.”
“And you must accustom yourself to an audience,” the wirth said in
German, with that same quiet air of iron resolution Will had already marked
in him. “If ever you’re to face a whole roomful of people, you must be able
first to come in upon the platform without all this silly fuss and hang-back
nonsense.”
Linnet’s nostrils quivered. She steadied herself with her hand on the
table once more, and made answer boldly, “I think I could more easily face
a roomful of people I’d never seen than sing before two in the parlour of the
inn here; that seems less personal. But,” she added shyly, with half an
appealing glance towards Will, “I’m not so nervous now. If this gentleman
wishes, I⁠—⁠I would sing another song to him?”
And so she did⁠—⁠a second and a third. As she went on, she grew braver,
and sang each time more naturally. At last the wirth dismissed her. Linnet
curtsied, and disappeared. “Well, what do you say to her now?” the landlord
asked in a tone of triumph, turning round to the young men as the door
closed behind her.
Florian assumed his most studiously judicial air. The perfect critic
should, above all things, be critical. Before Linnet’s face, indeed, he had
been enthusiastic enough, as politeness and due respect for her sex
demanded; but behind her back, and in her teacher’s presence, regard for his
reputation compelled him to adopt the severest tone of incorruptible
impartiality. “I think,” he said slowly, fingering his chin in one hand, and
speaking with great deliberation, like a recognised authority, “with time and
training she ought to serve your purpose well for popular entertainments.
Her organ, though undeveloped, is not wholly without some natural power
and compass.”
“And I think,” Will Deverill added, with a glow of generous
enthusiasm, “you’ve lighted on one of the very finest voices in all Europe.”

CHAPTER VI

THE ROBBLER

A day or two passed, and the young men from time to time saw, by
glimpses and snatches, a good deal of Linnet. For now the summer season
on the hills was over, and the cows had come back to their stall-fed
existence, the musical alp-girl had leisure on her hands for household
duties. In the morning she helped in the general work of the inn; in the
afternoon she practised much in the parlour upstairs with Andreas
Hausberger and his little company. But in the evenings,⁠—⁠ah, then, the
landlord brought her in more than once, by special request, to sing her
native songs to Will Deverill’s accompaniment on the lame old fiddle from
the corner cupboard. Those were pleasant meetings enough. Gradually the
mountain lass grew less afraid of the strangers; she talked German more
freely with Will Deverill now, and considerably enlarged her English
vocabulary by listening to Florian’s richly-worded harangues on men,
women, and things, and the musical glasses. It surprised Florian not a little,
however, to see that this child of Nature, unlike the ladies of culture in
London drawing-rooms, positively preferred Will’s society to his own, if
such a fact seems credible; though he explained away in part this
unaccountable defect of taste and instinct in one female heart by the
reflection that, after all, Will was able to converse with her in her own
language. His own finer points she could hardly understand; his words were
too deep, his thoughts were too high for her. Still, it annoyed him that even
an unsophisticated alp-girl should display so singular and so marked a
predilection for any other man when he was present. Indeed, he half made
up his mind, irksome as he felt sure the task would prove, to learn German
at once, as a safeguard against so humiliating a contretemps in future.
In the early part of the next week, Will proposed one day they should
mount the hills behind St Valentin, in search of a rare fern he was anxious to
secure before the snows of winter. Andreas Hausberger, nodding his head,
had heard of it before. It was a well-known rarity; all botanists who came to
the Zillerthal, he said, were sure to go in search of it. “But I’m not a
botanist,” Will burst out deprecatingly, for to admit that fell impeachment is
to number yourself outright in the dismal roll of scientific Dryasdusts; “I
only want the plants because I love them.”
“That’s all right,” Andreas answered, in his accustomed phrase. “You
want the plant, anyway. That’s the chief thing, ain’t it? Wal, there’s only one

place anywhere about St Valentin that it ever grows, and that’s the
Tuxerloch; without somebody to guide you there you’d never find it.”
“Oh, I won’t have a guide,” Will responded, hastily. “I hate to be
guided. It’s too ignominious. If I can’t find my own way about low
mountains like these, in the forest region, I’d prefer to lose it; and I
certainly won’t pay a man to show me where the fern is.”
“Certainly not,” the wirth answered, with true Tyrolese thrift. “I didn’t
mean that. Why waste your money on one of the regular guides, who charge
you five florins for eating half your lunch for you? But Linnet knows the
way as well as any trained guide of them. It’s not a hard road; she’ll go
along with you and show you it.”
“Oh, dear no,” Will replied, with a little hurried embarrassment, for he
felt it would be awkward to be thrown all day into the society of a young
girl in so equivocal a position. “I’m sure we can find the way all right
ourselves. There are woodcutters on the hills we can ask about the path; and
if it comes to that, I really don’t mind whether I find it or not⁠—⁠it’s only by
way of goal for a day’s expedition.”
Andreas Hausberger, however, was an imperious soul. “Linnet shall
go,” he said, shortly, without making more words about it. “She has nothing
else to do. It’s bad for her to be cooped up in the house too much. A long
walk on the hills will be no end of good for her. That’s what I always say;
when young women come down from the mountains in winter, they do
themselves harm by changing their mode of life all at once too suddenly,
and living in close rooms without half the exercise they used to take on the
alp with their milking and churning.”
So, whether they would or not, the two young men were compelled in
the end to put up as best they might with Linnet’s guidance and company.
No great hardship either, Will thought to himself, as Linnet, bare-headed,
but in her Sunday best, led the way up the green slopes behind the village
inn, with the bounding gait of a holiday alp-girl. As to Florian, his soul was
in the seventh heavens. To see that Oread’s light foot trip gracefully over
the lawns was to him pure joy⁠—⁠a stray breath of Hellas. What Hellas was
like, to be sure⁠—⁠the arid Hellas of reality⁠—⁠with its dusty dry hills and its
basking rocks, Florian had not in his own soul the very faintest conception.
But still, the Hellenic ideal was none the less near and dear to him. From
stray scraps of Theocritus and his inner consciousness he had constructed
for himself an Arcadia of quite Alpine greenness, and had peopled it with

lithe maidens of uncircumscribed affections. So, whenever he wanted to
give anything in heaven or earth the highest praise in his power, he
observed with an innocent smile that it was utterly Hellenic.
Linnet led them on, talking unaffectedly as she went, by long ridge-like
spurs, up vague trails through the woods, and over spongy pastures. As
elsewhere on their walks, Florian noted here and there little whitewashed
shrines at every turn of the road, and endless rude crucifixes where ghastly
white limbs seemed to writhe and struggle in realistic torture. Of a sudden,
by one of these, Linnet dropped on her knees⁠—⁠all at once without a word of
warning; she dropped as if mechanically, her lips moving meanwhile in
muttered prayer. Florian gazed at her curiously; Will stood by expectant, in
a reverent and mutely sympathetic attitude. For some minutes the girl knelt
there, murmuring low to herself. As she rose from her knees, she turned
gravely to Will. “Here my father has died,” she said, with solemn slowness
in her broken English. “He has slipped from that rock. The fall has killed
him. Will you say, for his soul’s repose, before you go, a Vaterunser?”
She looked up at him pleadingly, as if she thought the prayers of so
great a gentleman must carry weight of their own in Our Lady’s councils.
With infinite gentleness, Will bowed his head in acquiescence, and, after a
moment’s hesitation, not to hurt her feelings, dropped on his knees himself
and bent his neck in silent prayer before the tawdry little oratory. It was one
of those rough shrines, painted by unskilled fingers, where naked souls in
rude flames of purgatory plead for aid with clasped hands and outstretched
arms to placidly unheeding blue-robed Madonnas. Underneath, an
inscription, with N’s turned the wrong way, and capitals mixed with smaller
letters, informed the passer-by that, “Here, on the 20th of August 188-, the
virtuous guide and experienced woodcutter, Josef Telser of St Valentin,
perished by a fall from a slippery rock during a dangerous thunderstorm.
The pious wanderer is hereby implored to say three Paternosters, of his
charitable good-will, to redeem a tortured soul from the fires of purgatory.”
Will knelt there for a minute or two, muttering the Paternosters out of
pure consideration for Linnet’s sensitive feelings. When he rose from his
knees again, he saw the girl herself had moved off a little way to pick a few
bright ragworts and Michaelmas daisies that still lingered on these bare
heights, for a bouquet to lay before the shrine of Our Lady. Like all her
countrywomen, she was profoundly religious⁠—⁠or, if you choose to put it so,
profoundly superstitious. (’Tis the point of view alone that makes all the

difference.) Florian, a little apart, with his hand on his cheek and his head
on one side, eyed the oratory sentimentally. “How sweet it is,” he said, after
a pause, with an expansive smile, “to see this poor child, with her childlike
faith, thus throwing herself on her knees in filial submission before her
father’s cenotaph! How delightful is the sentiment that prompts such respect
for the memory of the dead! How eloquent must be the words of her simple
colophon!” Florian was fond of colophons; he didn’t know what they were,
but he always thought them so very Hellenic!
Will’s face was graver. With one finger he pointed to the
uncompromising flames of that most material purgatory. “I’m afraid,” he
said, seriously, “to her, poor child, this act of worship envisages itself in a
very different fashion. She prays to hasten the escape of her father’s soul
from what she takes to be a place of very genuine torture.”
Florian looked closer. As yet, he had never observed the subsidiary
episode of the spirits in their throes of fiery torment, which forms a
component part of all these wayside oratories. He inspected the rude design
with distant philosophical interest. “This is quaint,” he said, “most quaint. I
admire its art immensely. The point about it all that particularly appeals to
me is the charming superiority of Our Lady’s calm soul to the essentially
modern vice of pity. There she sits on her throne, unswerved and
unswerving, not even deigning to contemplate with that marked squint in
her eye the extremely unpleasant and uncomfortable position of her
petitioners beneath her. I admire it very much. I find it quite Etruscan.”
“To you and me⁠—⁠yes, quaint⁠—⁠nothing more than that,” Will
responded, soberly; “but to Linnet, it’s all real⁠—⁠fire, flames, and torments;
she believes what she sees there.”
As he spoke, the girl came back, with her nosegay in her hand, and,
tying it round with a thread from a little roll in her pocket, laid it reverently
on the shrine with a very low obeisance. “You see,” she said to Will,
speaking in English once more, for Andreas Hausberger wished her to take
advantage of this unusual opportunity for acquiring the language, “my poor
father is killed in the middle of his sins; he falls from the rock and is taken
up dead; there is no priest close by; he has not confessed; he has not had
absolution; he has no viaticum; no oil to anoint him. That makes it that he
must go straight down to purgatory.” And she clasped her hands as she
spoke in very genuine sympathy.

“Then all these shrines,” Florian said, looking up a little surprised, “are
they all of them where somebody has been killed by accident?”
“The most of them,” Linnet answered, as who should say of course; “so
many of our people are that way killed, you see; it is thunderstorms, or
snow-slides, or trees that fall, or floods on rivers, things that I cannot say,
for I know not the names how to speak them in English. And, as no priest is
by, so shall they go to purgatory. For that, we make shrines to release them
from their torments.”
They had gone on their way by this time, and reached a corner of the
path where it turned abruptly in zig-zags round a great rocky precipice. Just
as they drew abreast of it, and were passing the corner, a young man came
suddenly on them from the opposite direction. He was a fiery young man,
dressed in the native Tyrolese costume of real life; his hand held a rifle; his
conical hat was gaily decked behind, like most of his countrymen’s, with a
blackcock’s feather. The stranger’s mien was bold⁠—⁠nay, saucy and defiant.
He looked every inch a typical Alpine jäger. As he confronted them he
paused, and glared for a moment at Linnet. Next instant he raised his hat
with half-sarcastic politeness; then, in a very rapid voice, he said something
to their companion in a patois so pronounced that Will Deverill himself,
familiar as he was with land and people, could make nothing out of it. But
Linnet, unabashed, answered him back once or twice in the same uncouth
dialect. Their colloquy grew warm. The stranger seemed angry; he waved
his hand toward the Englishmen, and appeared, as Will judged, to be asking
their pretty guide what she did in such company. As for Linnet, her answers
were evidently of the sort which turneth away wrath, though on this hot-
headed young man they were ineffectually bestowed. He stamped his foot
once or twice; then he turned to Will Deverill.
“Who sent you out with the sennerin?” he asked, haughtily, in good
German.
Will answered him back with calm but cold politeness. “Herr
Hausberger, our wirth,” he said, “asked the Fräulein to accompany us, as
she knew the place where a certain fern I wished to find on the hills was
growing.”
“I know where it grows myself,” the jäger replied, with a defiant air.
“Let her go back to the inn; it is far for her to walk. I can show you the way
to it.”

“Certainly not,” Will retorted, in most decided tones. “The Fräulein has
been good enough to accompany us thus far; I can’t allow her now to go
back alone to the village.”
“She’s used to it,” the man said, gruffly, with half a sneer, his fingers
twitching.
“That may be,” Will retorted, with quiet self-possession; “but I’m not
used to allowing her to do so.”
For a minute the stranger put one sturdy foot forward, held his head
haughtily, with his hat on one side, and half lifted his fist, as if inclined to
rush forthwith upon the offending Englishman, and settle the question
between them then and there by open violence. But Linnet, biting her lip
and knitting her brow in suspense, rushed in to separate them. “Take care
what you do,” she cried hurriedly in English to Will. “Don’t let him strike.
Stand away of him. He’s a Robbler!”
“A what?” Will replied, half smiling at her eagerness, for he was not at
all alarmed himself by her truculent fellow-countryman.
“A Robbler,” Linnet repeated, looking up at him pleadingly. “You know
not what that is? Then will I tell you quickly. The feather in his hat, it is
turned the wrong way. When a Tyrolese does so, he wills thereby to say he
will make himself a Robbler. Therefore, if any one speaks angry to him, it is
known he will strike back. It is⁠—⁠I cannot say what it means in English, but
it invites to fight; it is the sign of a challenge.”
“Well, Robbler or no Robbler, I’m not afraid of him,” Will answered,
with quiet determination; “and if he will fight, why, of course, he must take
what he gets for it.”
“Perhaps,” Linnet said, simply, gazing back at him, much surprised, “in
your own country you are also a Robbler.”
The naïveté of her remark made Will laugh in spite of himself. That
laugh saved bloodshed. The Tyrolese, on his part, seeing the absurdity of
the situation all at once, broke into a smile himself; and, with that unlucky
smile, his sole claim to Robblerhood vanished incontinently. Linnet saw her
advantage. In a moment, she had poured into the young man’s ear a perfect
flood of explanatory eloquence in their native dialect. Gradually the
Robbler’s defiant attitude relaxed; his face grew calmer; he accepted her
account. Then he turned to Will with a more mollified manner: “You may
go on,” he said, graciously, with a regal nod of his head; “I allow the
sennerin to continue her way with you.”

As for Will, he felt half inclined, at first, to resent the lordly air of the
Robbler’s concession. On second thoughts, however, for Linnet’s sake, in
his ignorance of who the young man might be, and the nature of his claim
upon her, he judged it better to avoid any quarrel of any sort with a native of
the valley. So he raised his hat courteously, and let the stranger depart, with
a very bad grace, along the road to the village.
“What did you tell him?” he asked of Linnet, as the Robbler went his
way, singing defiantly to himself, down the grassy zig-zag.
“Oh, I told him,” Linnet answered, with a little flush of excitement,
“Andreas Hausberger had sent me that you might teach me English.”
“Is he your brother?” Will asked, not that he thought that likely, but
because it was less pointed than if he had asked her outright, “Is this young
man your lover?”
Linnet shook her head. “Ah, no,” she answered, with a very decided air;
“he’s nothing at all to me⁠—⁠not even my friend. I do not so much as care for
him. He’s only Franz Lindner. But then, he was jealous because he see that I
walk with you. He has no right of that; I am not anything to him; yet still he
must be jealous if somebody speak to me. It is because he is a Robbler, and
must do like that. A Robbler shall always fight if any man shall walk or talk
with his maiden. Though I am not his maiden, but he would have me to be
it. So will he fight with anyone who shall walk or talk with me. But when I
tell him Andreas Hausberger send me that I may learn English, then he go
away quietly. For Franz Lindner, or any other Robbler, will not fight with a
stranger so well as with a Tyroler.”

CHAPTER VII

WAGER OF BATTLE

That evening at the Wirthshaus, as things turned out, Will and Florian had
an excellent opportunity afforded them of observing for themselves the
manners and customs of the Tyrolese Robbler. There was a dance at the
inn⁠—⁠a prodigious dance, of truly national severity. It was the eve of a
wedding, and, as is usual on such occasions, the peasants of the
neighbourhood had assembled in full force to drink good luck to the
forthcoming union. The Gaststube or bar-room was crowded with a gay
throng of bright and merry faces. The young men were there, jaunty, bold,
and defiant; the old men, austere and stern of feature from the hardships of
long life among the grim-faced mountains. Groups of black-eyed lasses
stood about the room and bandied repartee with their gaily-dressed
admirers; matrons, unspoilt by conventional restraint, instead of checking
their mirth, looked on smiling and abetting them. Through the midst, the
Herr Vicar strolled, stout and complaisant, an easy-going man; not his to
stem the tide of their innocent merriment; so long as they confessed twelve
times a year, and subscribed to release their parents’ souls from purgatory,
he sanctified by his presence the beer and the dances. Andreas Hausberger,
too, flitted here and there through the crowd with an anxious eye; ’twas his
task to provide for and protect the bodies of his guests, as ’twas the Herr
Vicar’s to save their priceless souls from undue temptation.
At one end of the room, on a little raised platform, the music sat
installed;⁠—⁠a trombone, a zither, and a wooden hackbrettle made up the
whole orchestra. Scarcely had the performers struck up an enlivening tune
when the men, selecting as partners the girls of their choice, began to dance
round the hall in the very peculiar and (to say the whole truth) extremely
ungraceful Tyrolean fashion. Will and Florian had heard from the landlord
beforehand of the expected feast, to which they were not invited; but, “at
the sound of the harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of music,” as Florian
phrased it, their curiosity was so deeply aroused that they crept from their
sitting-room and peeped cautiously in at the door of the Tanzboden. The
sight that met their eyes in that close-packed hall was sufficiently striking.
Even Florian allowed this was utterly Arcadian. For a minute or two, just at
first, the young men and maidens, grasping each other wildly round the
neck and waist with both their arms, in a sort of bear-like death-hug,
whirled and eddied in a maze round and round the room, stamping their

heavy boots, till Will almost trembled for the stability of the rafters. For
some time that was all: they twisted and twirled in closely-coupled pairs,
clasped breast to breast, like so many dancing dervishes. But, of a sudden,
at a change of the music, as if by magic, with one accord, the whole figure
altered. Each man, letting his partner go, began suddenly to perform a series
of strange antics and evolutions around her, the relics of some pre-historic
dance, of which the snapping of fingers and uttering of heuchs in a
Highland fling are but a faint and colourless reminiscence. As the reel went
on, the music grew gradually faster and faster, and the motions of the men
still more savage and fantastic. The two Englishmen looked on in
astonishment and admiration. Such agility and such verve they had never
before seen or even dreamt of. Could these rustic cavaliers be really made
of india-rubber? They twisted and turned and contorted themselves all the
time with such obliviousness of their bones, and such extraordinary energy!
They smacked their lips and tongues as they went; they jumped high into
the air; they bent back till their heads touched the ground behind; they
bounded upright once more to regain their position like elastic puppets, and,
in between whiles, they slapped their resounding thighs with their horny
hands; they crowed like cocks; they whistled like capercailzie; they
stamped on the ground with their hob-nailed shoes; they shouted and sang,
and clicked their tongues in their cheeks, and made unearthly noises deep
down in their throats for which language has as yet no articulate equivalent.
Florian gazed and glowered. And well he might; ’twas an orgie of strange
sound, a phantasmagoria of whirling and eddying motion.
While all this was going on, the two young Englishmen stood undecided
and observant by the lintel of the door, even Florian half-abashed at so
much unwonted merriment. But after a while, the Herr Vicar, whose
acquaintance they had already made among the stones of the churchyard,
spied them out by the entrance, and, with one hospitable fat forefinger
extended and crooked, beckoned them into the Tanzboden. “Come on,” he
cried, “come on; there’s room enough for all; our people are still glad to
entertain the Herr strangers: for some, unawares, have thus entertained
angels.”
So encouraged by the authorised mouthpiece of the parish, Will and
Florian stepped boldly into the crowded room, and watched the little groups
of stalwart young men and nut-brown lasses with all the interest of
unexpected novelty. The scene was indeed a picturesque and curious one.

Every Tyrolese is, or has been, or wishes to be thought, a mountain hunter.
So each man wore his hat, adorned with the trophies of his prowess in the
chase; with some, ’twas a gamsbart, or so-called chamois’ beard⁠—⁠the tuft
of coarse hair that grows high like a crest along the creature’s back in the
pairing season; with others, ’twas the tail-feathers of the glossy blackcock,
stuck saucily on one side, with that perky air of self-satisfied assurance so
characteristic of hot youth in the true-born Tyroler. Glancing around the
room, however, Will saw at a single look that two young men alone among
that eager crowd wore their feathers with a difference⁠—⁠the “hook” being
turned round in the opposite direction from all their neighbours’. One of
these two was a tall and big-built young man of very florid complexion,
with a scar on his forehead; the other was their fiery friend of that morning
on the hills, Franz Lindner. From what Linnet had said, Will guessed at
once by the turn of the feather that both young men went in for being
considered Robblers.
As he turned to impart his conjecture to Florian, Linnet caught his eye
mutely from a corner by the mantelpiece. She wasn’t taking part in the reel
herself, so, undaunted by his experience of Franz Lindner that day, Will
strolled over to her side, followed close at heel by Florian. “You don’t
dance?” he said, bending over her with as marked politeness as he would
have shown to a lady in a London drawing-room.
“No; I may not,” Linnet answered, in her pretty broken English, with a
smile of not unnatural womanly pleasure that the strangers should thus
single her out before all her folk for so much personal attention. “I have
refuse Franz Lindner, so may I not dance this time with any one. It is our
custom so. When a girl shall refuse to dance with a man first, she may not
that turn accept any other. Nor may he, in turn, ask her again that evening.”
“How delightful!” Florian cried, effusively. “Franz Lindner’s loss is our
gain, Fräulein Linnet. No; don’t frown at me like that; it must be Fräulein;
I’ve too much respect for you to call you otherwise. But, anyhow, we’ll sit
out this dance and talk with you.”
“And I,” Will put in with a quiet smile, “I’ll call you Linnet, because
you prefer it.”
“Thank you,” Linnet said, shyly, with a grateful flash of her eyes, and a
side glance towards Franz Lindner; “it seems less as if you mock at me.”
As they spoke, the figure changed of a sudden once more to a still
stranger movement. The women, falling apart, massed themselves together

in a central group, in attitudes expressive of studied indifference and
inattention to the men; their partners, on the contrary, placing themselves
full in front of them, began a series of most extraordinary twists and twirls,
accompanied by loud cries or snapping of fingers, and endeavoured by
every means in the power, both of lungs and limbs, to compel their
disdainful coquettes to take notice of their antics. While they stood there
and watched⁠—⁠Linnet with eyes askance on Franz Lindner’s face⁠—⁠Andreas
Hausberger strolled up, and took his place beside them.
“Why, that’s the blackcock’s call!” Will exclaimed, with a start of
recognition, as the dancers, with one accord, uttered all in a chorus a shrill
and piercing note of challenge and defiance. “I’ve heard it on the
mountains.”
“Yes,” the wirth assented; “that’s the blackcock’s call, and this, that
they’re doing, is the blackcock’s love-dance. In the springtime, on the
mountains, you know, the blackcocks and the grey hens assemble in their
dancing place⁠—⁠their Tanzboden we call it, just the same as we call this one.
There, the hens stand aside, and pretend to be coy, and take no notice of
their mates, like the girls in this dance here; while the blackcock caper in
front of them, and flap their wings, and fluff their necks, and do all they
know to display their strength and beauty. Whoever dances the most and
best, gets most of the hens to join his harem. So our young men have got up
this love-dance to imitate them; they flap their arms the same way, and give
the blackcock’s challenge. Nature’s pretty much the same above and below,
I guess⁠—⁠especially here in the Tyrol, where we haven’t yet learned to hide
our feelings under smooth silk hats as you do in England. But it’s all good
for trade, and that’s the great thing. It makes them thirsty. You’ll see, after
this bout, the beer will flow like water.”
And, sure enough, the wirth was right. As soon as the dance was ended,
young men and maidens, with equal zest, betook themselves, all alike, to
the consolations of the beer-jug. Their thirst was mighty. And no wonder,
indeed, for this Tyrolese dancing is no drawing-room game, but hard
muscular exercise. Andreas Hausberger looked on with a cynical smile on
those thin, cold lips of his. “It’s good for trade,” he murmured again, half to
himself, once or twice, as the girls at the bar filled the beer-mugs merrily;
“very good for trade. So are all amusements. That’s the way the foolish get
rid of their money⁠—⁠and the wise get hold of it.”

After the beer came a pause, a long, deep-drawn pause; and then two
young men, standing out from the throng, began to sing alternately at one
another in short Tyrolese stanzas. One of them was Franz Lindner; the other
was the young man with the scar on his forehead, whom Linnet described
as her cousin Fridolin. What they sang, neither Florian nor Will could make
out, for the words of the song were in the roughest form of the mountain
dialect; but it was clear from their manner, and the way they flung out their
words point blank at one another’s heads, that they improvised as they
went, like Virgilian shepherds, and that their remarks were by no means
either polite or complimentary in substance or character. The rest stood
round in a circle and listened, laughing heartily at times as each in turn
scored a point now and then off his angry rival; while Linnet and the other
girls blushed again and again at some audacious retort, though the bolder
among the women only tittered to themselves or looked up with arch
glances at each risky allusion. Andreas Hausberger too, stood by, all alert to
keep the peace; it was plain from the quick light in his resolute eye, and the
rapid upward movement of his twitching hand, he was ready at a moment’s
notice to intervene between the combatants, and put a stop in the nick of
time to the scoffing contest of defiance and derision.
The song, however, passed off without serious breach of the peace.
Then more dances followed, more beer, and more bucolic contests. As the
evening wore on, the fun grew fast and furious. On the stroke of twelve, the
Herr Vicar withdrew⁠—⁠not one hour too early; his flock were fast getting
beyond control of his counsels. Linnet and a few others of the more modest-
looking girls now sat out from the dance; the rest continued to whirl round
and round the room in still wilder and more fantastic movements than ever.
Andreas Hausberger was now yet more clearly on the alert. A stray spark
would raise a flame in that magazine of gunpowder. Suddenly, at the end of
the first dance after the priest’s departure, the young man with the scar on
his forehead, called Cousin Fridolin, came forward unexpectedly to where
Linnet sat aside between Will Deverill and Florian. He had danced with her
once before in the course of the evening, and Will observed that through
that dance Franz Lindner’s eyes had never been taken off his rival and
Linnet. But now the tall young man came forward with a dash, and without
one word of warning, placed his conical hat, blackcock’s feather and all,
with a jodel of challenge, on Linnet’s forehead. They had seen the same
thing done before more than once that evening, and Linnet had explained to

them that the custom was equivalent to a declaration of love for the lady so
honoured⁠—⁠’twas as much as to say, “This girl is mine; who disputes it?”
But as the tall young man stood back with a smile of triumph on his
handsome lips, one hand on his hip, staring fixedly at Linnet, Franz Lindner
sprang forth with a face as black as night, and a brow like thunder.
Trembling with rage, he seized the hat from her head, and tore hastily from
its band the offending plume. “Was kost die Feder?” he cried, in a tone of
angry contempt, holding it up in his hand before the eyes of its owner; “Was
kost die Feder?” which is, being interpreted, “How much for your feather?”
Quick as lightning, the answer rang out, “Fünf Finger und ein
Griff”⁠—⁠“Five fingers and a grip.” It is the customary challenge of the
Tyrolese Robbler, and the customary acceptance.
Before Will had time to understand what was happening next, in the
crack of a finger, in the twinkle of an eye, the two young men had closed,
with hands and arms and bodies, and were grappling with each other in a
deadly struggle. All night long they had been watching and provoking one
another; all night long they had vied in their attentions to Linnet, and their
studious interchange of mutual insults. Sooner or later a fight seemed
inevitable. Now, flown with insolence and beer, and heated from the dance,
they flung themselves together, with one accord, like two tigers in their
fury. Linnet clapped her hands to her ears, and shut her eyes in horror. For a
minute or two, it seemed to every looker-on as though there would be
bloodshed in the inn that evening. Florian observed this little episode with
philosophic interest; ’twas pleasant to watch these simple dramas of the
primary emotions⁠—⁠love, jealousy, passion⁠—⁠still working themselves out as
on the stage of Hellas. He had never before seen them so untrammelled in
their play; he stood here face to face with Homeric simplicity.
In five minutes, however, to his keen disappointment, the whole scene
was finished. Andreas Hausberger, that cool, calm man of the world,
perceiving at a glance that such contests in his inn were very bad for trade,
and that ’twould be a pity for him to lose by a violent death so good a
singer, or so constant a customer, interposed his heavy hand between the
angry combatants. Your half-tipsy man, be he even a Tyrolese, though often
quarrelsome, is usually placable. A short explanation soon set everything
right again. Constrained by Herr Andreas, with his imperious will, the two
Robblers consented, after terms interchanged, to drown their differences in
more mugs of beer, and then retire for the evening. The young man with the

scar, whom they called Cousin Fridolin, regretted that he had interfered
with Franz Lindner’s maiden, but excused his act as a mere hasty excess of
cousinly feeling. Franz Lindner in return, not to be outdone in magnanimity,
though still with flashing eyes, and keen side-glance at Linnet, regretted
that he had offered such indignity in his haste to the dishonoured symbol of
his comrade’s championship. Hands were shaken all round; cuts and bruises
were tended; and, almost as soon as said, to Florian’s infinite disgust, the
whole party had settled down by the tables once more, on an amicable
basis, to beer and conversation.
But before they retired from that evening’s revel, Linnet murmured to
Will in a tone of remonstrance very real and aggrieved, “Franz Lindner had
no right to call me his Mädchen.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE HUMAN HEART

Next morning Will woke of himself very early. He jumped out of bed at
once, and crossed, as he stood, to the open window. The sun had just risen.
Light wisps of white cloud crawled slowly up the mountains; the dewdrops
on the grass-blades sparkled in the silent rays like innumerable opals. ’Twas
the very time for an early stroll! But the air, though keen, had the rawness
and chill of an autumn morning. Will sniffed at it dubiously. He had half a
mind to turn in again and take an hour’s more sleep. Should he dress and go
out, or let the world have time to get warmed and aired before venturing
abroad in it?
As he debated and shivered, however, a sight met his eye which
determined him at once on the more heroic course of action. It was Linnet,
in her simple little peasant dress, turning up the hill-path that led behind the
wirthshaus. Now, a chance of seeing Linnet alone without Florian was not
to be despised; she interested him so much, and, besides, he wanted to ask
her the whole truth about the Robblers. Without more ado, therefore, he
dressed himself hastily, and strolled out of the inn. She hadn’t gone far, he
felt sure; he would find her close by, sitting by herself on the open grass-
slope beyond the belt of pinewood.
And so, sure enough, he did. He came upon her unseen. She was seated
with her back to him on a round boulder of grey stone, pouring her full
throat in spontaneous music. For a minute or two, Will stood still, and
listened and looked at her. He could see from his point of vantage, a little on
one side behind the boulder, the rise and fall of her swelling bosom, the
delicate trills under her rich brown chin. And then⁠—⁠oh, what melody! Will
drank it in greedily. He was loth to disturb her, so delicious was this
outpouring of her soul in song. For, like her namesake of the woods, Linnet
sang best when she sang of her own accord, delivering her full heart of pure
internal impulse.
At last she ceased, and turned. Her eye fell upon Will She started and
blushed; she had expected no such audience. The young man raised his hat.
“You’re alone,” he said, “Linnet?”
The girl looked up all crimson. “Yes; I came out that I should be alone,”
she answered, shyly, “I did not wish to see anyone. I wished for time to
think many things over.”

“Then you don’t want me to stop?” Will broke in, somewhat crestfallen,
yet drawing a step nearer.
“Oh, no; I do not mean that,” Linnet answered in haste, laying her hand
on her bosom. Then she burst into German, which came so much easier to
her. “I wanted to get away from all the others,” she said, looking up at him
pleadingly⁠—⁠and, as she looked, Will saw for the first time that big tears
stood brimming in her lustrous eyes; “I knew they would tease me
about⁠—⁠about what happened last evening, and I didn’t wish to hear it till I
had thought over with myself what way I should answer them.”
“Then you’re not afraid of me?” Will asked, with a little thrill. She was
only an alp-girl, but she sang like a goddess; and it’s always pleasant, you
know, to find a woman trusts one.
“I want you to stop,” Linnet answered, simply.
She motioned him with one hand to a seat on a little heap of dry stones
hard by. Will threw himself down on the heap in instant obedience to her
mute command, and leaned eagerly forward. “Well, so this Robbler man
wants to have you, Linnet,” he said, with some earnestness; “and you don’t
want to have him. And he would have fought for you last night, against the
man with the scar; and the girls in the inn will tease you about it this
morning.”
“Yes; the girls will tease me,” Linnet answered, “and will say cruel
things, for some of them are not fond of me, because, you see, Franz
Lindner and the other man, my cousin Fridolin, are both of them Robblers,
and would both of them fight for me. Now, a village that has a Robbler is
always very proud of him; he’s its champion and head; and if a Robbler
pays attention to a girl, it’s a very great honour. So some of the other girls
don’t like it at all, that the Robblers of two villages should quarrel about me.
Though Gott in Himmel knows I’ve not encouraged either of them.”
“And would you marry Franz Lindner?” Will asked, with genuine
interest. It seemed to him a pity⁠—⁠nay, almost a desecration⁠—⁠that this
beautiful girl, with her splendid voice, and all the possibilities it might
enclose for the future, should throw herself away upon a Tyrolese hunter,
whom the self-confidence engendered by mere muscular strength had
turned for local eyes into a petty hero.
“No; I don’t think I would marry him,” Linnet answered, after a short
pause, with a deliberative air, as though weighing well in her own mind all
the pros and cons of it. “He’d take me if I chose, no doubt, and so also

would Fridolin. Franz says he has left three other girls for me. But I don’t
like him, of course, any better for that. He ought to have kept to them.”
“And you like him?” Will went on, drawing circles with his stick on the
grass as he spoke, and glancing timidly askance at her.
“Yes; I like him⁠—⁠well enough,” Linnet responded, doubtfully. “I liked
him better once, perhaps. But of late, I care less for him. I never cared for
him much indeed; I was never his Mädchen. He had no right to say that, no
right at all, at all⁠—⁠for with us, you know, in Tyrol, that means a great deal.
How much, I couldn’t tell you. But I never gave him any cause at all to say
so.”
“And of late you like him less?” Will inquired, pressing her hard with
this awkward question. Yet he spoke sympathetically. He had no reason for
what he said, to be sure⁠—⁠no reason on earth. He spoke at random, out of
that pure instinctive impulse which leads every man in a pretty girl’s
presence, mean he little or much, to make at least the best of every passing
advantage. ’Tis pure virility that: the natural Adam within us. I wouldn’t
give ten cents for the too virtuous man who by “ethical culture” has
educated it out of him.
Linnet looked down at her shoes⁠—⁠for she possessed those luxuries.
“Yes; of late I like him less,” she answered, somewhat tremulously.
“Why so?” Will insisted. His lips, too, quivered.
Linnet raised her dark eyes and met his for one instant. “I’ve seen other
people since; perhaps I like other people better,” she answered, candidly.
“What other people?” Will asked, all on fire.
“Oh, that would be telling,” Linnet answered, with an arch look.
“Perhaps my cousin Fridolin⁠—⁠or perhaps the young man with the yellow
beard⁠—⁠or perhaps the gnädige Herr’s honoured friend, Herr Florian.”
Will drew figures with his stick on the grass for a minute or two. Then
he looked up and spoke again. “But, in any case,” he said, “you don’t mean,
whatever comes, to marry Franz Lindner?” It grieved him to think she
should so throw herself away upon a village bully.
Linnet plucked a yellow ragwort and pulled out the ray-florets one by
one as she answered, “I shan’t have the chance. For, to tell you the truth, I
think Andreas Hausberger means himself to marry me.”
At the words, simply spoken, Will drew back, all aghast. The very
notion revolted him. As yet, he was not the least little bit in his own soul
aware he was in love with Linnet. He only knew he admired her voice very

much; for the rest, she was but a simple, beautiful, unlettered peasant girl. It
doesn’t occur, of course, to an English gentleman in Will Deverill’s
position, to fall in love at first sight with a Tyrolese milkmaid. But Andreas
Hausberger! the bare idea distressed him. The man was so cold, so cynical,
so austere, so unlovable! and Will more than half-suspected him of
avaricious money-grubbing. The girl was so beautiful, so simple-hearted, so
young, and Heaven only knew to what point of success that voice might
lead her. “Oh no,” he burst out, impetuously; “you can’t really mean
that?⁠—⁠you never could dream⁠—⁠don’t tell me you could⁠—⁠of accepting that
man Andreas Hausberger as a husband!”
“Why not?” the girl said, calmly. “He’s rich and well to do. I could keep
my mother in such comfort then, and pay for such masses for my father’s
soul⁠—⁠far more than if I took Franz Lindner or my cousin Fridolin, who are
only jägers. Andreas Hausberger’s a wirth, the richest man in St Valentin;
he has horses and cows and lands and pastures. And if he says I must, how
can I well refuse him?”
She looked up at him with a look of childlike appeal. In a moment,
though with an effort, Will realised to himself how the question looked to
her. Andreas Hausberger was her master, and had always been her master.
She must do as he bid, for he was very masterful. He was her teacher, too,
and would help her to make her fortune as a singer in the world, if ever she
made it. He was rich, as the folk of the village counted riches, and could
manage that things should be pleasant or unpleasant for her, as it suited his
fancy. In a community where men still fought with bodily arms for their
brides, Andreas Hausberger’s will might well seem law to his sennerin in
any such matter.
“Besides,” Linnet went on, plucking another ragwort, and similarly
demolishing it, “if I didn’t want to take him, the Herr Vicar would make me.
For the Herr Vicar would do, of course, as Andreas Hausberger wished him.
And how could I dare disobey the Herr Vicar’s orders?”
To this subtle question of religion and morals Will Deverill, for his part,
had no ready-made answer. Church and State, it was clear, were arrayed
against him. So, after casting about for a while in his own mind in vain for a
reply, he contented himself at last with going off obliquely on a collateral
issue. “And you think,” he said, “Andreas Hausberger really wants to marry
you?”

“Well, he never quite told me so,” Linnet replied, half-deprecatingly, as
who fears to arrogate to herself too great an honour, “and perhaps I’m
wrong; but still I think he means it. And I think it’ll perhaps depend in part
upon how he finds the foreign Herrschaft like my singing. For that, he says
little to me about it at present. But if he sees I do well, and am worth
making his wife⁠—⁠for he’s the best husband a girl could get in St
Valentin⁠—⁠in that case, ja wohl, I believe he’ll ask me.”
She said it all naturally, as so much matter of course. But Will’s poetic
soul rebelled against the sacrifice. “Surely,” he cried, “you must love some
one else; and why not, then, take the man you love, whoever he may be, and
leave Andreas Hausberger’s money to perish with him?”
“So!” Linnet said quickly⁠—⁠the pretty German “so!” Her fingers
trembled as she twitched at the rays of the ragwort. She plucked the florets
in haste, and flung them away one by one. First love’s conversation deals
largely in pauses. “The man one might love,” she murmured at last with a
petulant air, “doesn’t always love one. How should he, indeed? It is not in
nature. For, doesn’t the song say, ‘Who loves me, love I not; whom I love,
loves me not?’ But what would the Herr Vicar say if he heard me talking
like this with the foreign gentlefolk? He’d tell me it was sin. A girl should
not speak of her heart to strangers. I have spoken too much. But I couldn’t
help it, somehow. The gnädige Herr is always so kind to me. You lead me
on to confess. You can understand these things, I think, so much better than
the others.”
She rose, half-hesitating. Will Deverill, for his part, rose in turn and
faced her. For a second each paused; they looked shyly at one another. Will
thought her a charming girl⁠—⁠for a common milkmaid. Linnet thought him
a kind, good friend⁠—⁠for one of the great unapproachable foreign
Herrschaft. Will held out one frank hand. Linnet gave him the tips of her
brown fingers timidly. He clasped them in his own while a man might count
ten. “Shall you be here . . . to-morrow . . . about the same time?” he
inquired, before he let them drop, half hesitating.
“Perhaps,” Linnet answered, looking down demurely. Then blushing,
she nodded at him, half curtsied, and sprang away. She gave a rapid glance
to right and left, to see if she was perceived, darted lightly down the hill,
and hurried back to the wirthshaus.
But all that day long, Will was moody and silent. He thought much to
himself of this strange idea that Andreas Hausberger, that saturnine man,

was to marry this beautiful musical alp-girl.

CHAPTER IX

THE MAN OF THE WORLD

For some four or five mornings after this hillside interview, Florian noticed
every day a most unaccountable fancy on Will Deverill’s part for solitary
walks at early dawn before breakfast. Neither dew nor hoar-frost seemed to
damp his ardour. Florian rose betimes himself, to be sure, but Will had
always already distanced him. And on every one of those five mornings,
when Will said farewell to Linnet by the big grey boulder, he used the same
familiar formula of leave-taking, “You’ll be here again to-morrow?” And
every time, Linnet, thrilling and trembling inwardly, answered back the
same one conscience-salving word, “Perhaps,” which oracular and highly
hypothetical promise she nevertheless most amply fulfilled with great
regularity on the following morning. For, when Will arrived at the trysting-
place, he always found Linnet was there before him; and she rose from her
rocky seat with a blush of downcast welcome, which a less modest man
than he might easily have attributed to its true motive. To Will, however,
most unassuming of men and poets, she was only an interesting alp-girl,
who liked to meet him on the hillside for a lesson in English. Though, to be
sure, why it was necessary to give the lesson alone in the open air at six
o’clock in the morning, and, still more, why the professor should have
thought it needful to hold the pupil’s hand in his own for many minutes
together, to enforce his points, Will himself would no doubt have been hard
put to explain on philological principles. Moreover, strange to say, for
Linnet’s sake, the conversation was conducted mostly in German.
Lookers-on, however, see most of the game. On the sixth such morning,
it occurred casually to Florian as he lay abed and reflected, to get up early
himself and go out on the hillside. Not that the airy epicurean philosopher
was by any means afflicted with the essentially vulgar vice of curiosity. He
was far too deeply occupied with Mr Florian Wood to think of expending
much valuable attention on the habits and manners of less-interesting
personalities. But in this particular case he felt he had a positive Duty to
perform. Now, a Duty had for Florian all the luxury of novelty. He was
troubled with few such, and whenever he found one, he made the most of it.
Just at present, he was persuaded Will Deverill was on the eve of “getting
himself into an entanglement” with the beautiful milkmaid who so
paradoxically preferred his society to Florian’s. Plain Duty, therefore, to
Will himself, to Mrs Deverill mère, to the just expectations of the ladies of

England (who had clearly a prior claim on Will’s fortune and affection),
compelled Florian to interfere before things went too far, so as to save his
friend from the consequences of his own possible folly. Animated by these
noble impulses, Florian did not even shrink from leaving a very snug bed at
five o’clock that cold morning, and waiting at the window, like a private
detective, till Will took his way up the path to the hillside.
About six, Will emerged from the door of the inn. Florian gave him law,
five minutes law⁠—⁠just rope enough to hang himself. Then, marking from
the back window which way Will had gone, he followed the trail up hill
with all the novel zest of an amateur policeman. Skulking along the
pinewood, he came upon them from behind, by the same path which Will
himself had taken on the morning when he followed Linnet first to the
boulder in the pasture. Then, treading softly over the green turf with
muffled footfall, he was close upon the unconscious pair before they knew
or suspected it. The ill-advised young people were seated side by side on a
little ledge of rock that protruded from the green-sward. Will leant eagerly
forward, holding Linnet’s hand, and looking hard into her eyes; the girl
herself drew back, and cast down her glance, as if half fearing the ardour of
his evident advances. Respect for the conventions made Florian cough
lightly before disturbing their interview. At the sound, both looked up.
Some five feet nothing of airy observant humanity beamed blandly down
upon them. Linnet gave a little cry, started up in surprise, hid her crimson
face hurriedly between two soft brown hands, and then, yielding to the first
impulse of her shy rustic nature, fled away without one word, leaving Will
face to face with that accusing moralist.
The epicurean philosopher seated himself, like stern justice in
miniature, beside his erring friend. His face was grave: when Florian did
gravity, he did it, as life did everything else, “consummately.” For a minute
or two he only stared hard at Will, slowly nodding his head like an
earthenware mandarin, and stroking his smooth chin in profound
meditation. At the end of that time, he delivered his bolt, point blank.
“Tomorrow,” he said, calmly, “we go on to Innsbruck.”
“Why so?” Will asked, with a dogged air of dissent.
“Because,” Florian answered, with crushing dialectic, “we never
intended to spend our whole time on the upper Zillerthal, did we?”
This sudden flank movement took Will fairly by surprise. For Florian
was quite right. Their plan of campaign on leaving London included the

South Tyrol, Verona, and Milan. “But a day or two longer,” he put in, half-
imploringly, thus caught off his guard. “Just a day or two longer to . . . to
settle things up a bit.”
Stern justice was inexorable. “Not one other night,” Florian answered,
severely. “The lotus has by this time been sufficiently eaten. I see what this
means. I know now why you’ve kept me here so long at St Valentin. With
Innsbruck and Cortina and the untrodden Dolomites beckoning me on to
come, you’ve planted me plump in this hole, and kept me here at your
side⁠—⁠all for the sake of one Tyrolese cow-girl. In the name of common
morality,” and Florian frowned like a very puisne judge, “I protest against
these most irregular and improper proceedings.”
“I never meant the girl any harm,” Will answered, with a faint flush.
“That’s just it, my dear fellow. I know very well you didn’t. That’s the
head and front of your offending. If you had meant her harm, of course I
could much more readily have forgiven you.”
“Florian,” Will said, looking up, “let’s be serious, please, for once. This
is a serious matter.”
Florian pursed his thin lips, and knitted his white brow judicially. “H’m,
h’m,” he said, with slow deliberateness. “It’s as bad as that, is it? Why,
Deverill, I assure you, I’ve rarely⁠—⁠if ever⁠—⁠been as serious as this in all my
life before. Don’t look at me like that. I mean just what I say. I’m not
thinking about the girl, but about you, my dear fellow. The morals of these
parts, as you very well know, are primitive⁠—⁠primitive. It won’t do her
much harm, even if it gets noised about, to have been seen on the hills,
alone in the grey dawn, hand in hand with an Englishman. This is no place
for Oriental seclusion of women. Indeed, from what I hear, the Arcadian
relations of these unchaperoned alp-girls with their lovers from the plains
must be something truly sweet in their unaffected simplicity. Herr
Hausberger was telling me last night that when an alp-girl marries, all the
hunters and peasants, her discarded lovers, whom she has admitted to the
intimacy of her châlet on the mountains, leave a cradle at the door of her
chosen husband on the night of the wedding. The good man wakes up the
morning after his marriage to find staring him in the face, on his own
threshold, these tangible proofs of his wife’s little slips in her spinster
existence. . . . It’s a charming custom. I find it quite economical. He knows
the worst at once. It saves him the trouble, so common among ourselves, of
finding them out for himself piecemeal in the course of his later relations.”

“You are wandering from the question,” Will interrupted, testily. He
didn’t quite relish these generalised innuendoes against poor Linnet’s
character.
“Not at all, not at all,” Florian went on very gravely. “The point of these
remarks lies in the application thereof, as Captain Cuttle puts it. . . . When
Linnet marries, you mean, I suppose, to increase the number of the delicate
little offerings presented at her door by⁠——”
Will started up and glared at him. “You shall not speak like that,” he
cried in a very angry voice, “of such a girl as Linnet.”
The little man waved one dainty white hand with a deprecating gesture
towards his excited friend. “This is too bad,” he said, sighing, “very bad
indeed, far worse than I imagined. I said it on purpose, just to see what you
were driving at. And I find out the worst. If you mean the girl no harm, and
take a slighting little jest on her to heart like that, why your case is
desperate⁠—⁠an aggravated attack, complicated by incipient matrimonial
symptoms. You need change of air, change of scene, change of company.
Law of Medes and Persians, it’s Innsbruck to-morrow! You go with me as I
bid, or I go without you. Demur, and I leave you at once to your fate. You
may stop with your cow-girl.”
“Don’t speak of her by that name!” Will broke in, half-angrily.
But Florian, for his part, was provokingly cool. “All A is A,” he said,
calmly, with irresistible logic⁠—⁠“and every cow-girl’s a cow-girl. I’ll call
her a boutrophista, or a neat-herding Phyllis, if it gives you any pleasure.
That’s neither here nor there. The point’s just this⁠—⁠You mean the girl no
harm: then what the deuce do you mean? Are you going to marry her?”
“No; certainly not,” Will answered. She was a very nice girl, and he
loved to talk with her⁠—⁠there was something so sweetly unsophisticated in
her ways that she charmed and attracted him. But marry her? No; the very
word surprised him; he had never even dreamt of it. In the first place
(though as yet he hadn’t as much as thought about that), he had nothing to
marry upon. And in the second place, if he had, could he take a Tyrolese
milkmaid fresh from the cowsheds in his tow to London, and present her to
his friends as Mrs Will Deverill?
“Then what the deuce do you mean?” Florian repeated, persistently. His
sound common-sense, when he chose to let it loose from his veneer of
affectation, was no mean commodity.

Thus driven to bay, Will was forced to reply with a somewhat sheepish
air, “I don’t know that I mean anything. I’ve never tried to formulate my
state of mind to myself. She’s a very nice girl . . . for her class and sort . . .
and I like to talk to her.”
“And when you talk to her, you like to hold her hand and lean forward
like this, and stare with all your eyes, and look for all the world as if you
wanted to devour her! Oh yes; I’ve seen you. No, no, Will, it won’t do; I’ve
been there myself, and I know all about it. Looking at the matter
impartially, as a man of the world”⁠—⁠and Florian, drawing himself up,
assumed automatically, as those words rolled out, his most magisterial
attitude⁠—⁠“what I’m really afraid of is that you’ll get gradually dragged into
this rustic syren’s vortex, and be swallowed up before you know it in the
treacherous sea of matrimony. However, you don’t believe that, and I know
enough of the world to know very well it’s no use, therefore, arguing out
that aspect of the case with you. No fellow will ever believe he can be such
a fool⁠—⁠till he catches himself in church face to face at last with the awful
reality. I prefer, accordingly, to go on the other tack with you. If you don’t
mean to marry the girl, then, whether you know it or not, you mean no good
to her. I dare say you’ve got all sorts of conventional notions in your
head⁠—⁠which, thank heaven, I don’t share⁠—⁠about honour and so forth . . .
how a cow-girl’s virtue⁠—⁠I beg your pardon, a boutrophista’s, or a neat-
herding Phyllis’s⁠—⁠is as sacred at your hands as the eldest daughter’s of a
hundred marquises. But that’s neither here nor there. If you don’t marry the
girl, and you don’t ruin the girl, there’s only one thing left possible⁠—⁠you
must break the girl’s heart for her. Between ourselves, being, I flatter
myself, a tolerable psychologist, I don’t for a moment suppose that’s what
would actually happen; you’d get yourself entangled, and you’d go on and
on, and you’d flounder and struggle, and you’d marry her in the end, just to
save the girl misery. But we’ll do poojah to your intellect at the expense of
your heart, and we’ll put it the other way, as you seem to prefer it. Very
well, then; sooner or later you’ll have to leave this place. No doubt, after
what I’ve seen this morning, it’ll cost the girl a wrench⁠—⁠her vanity must be
flattered by receiving so much undisguised attention from a real live
gentleman. But, sooner or later, as I say, come it must, of course; and
sooner, on the whole, will be better for her than later. The longer you stop,
the more she’ll fall in love with you; the quicker you get away from her the
less it’ll hurt her.”

He spoke the words of wisdom⁠—⁠according to his kind. Will rose again
with an effort, and started homeward. As they walked down the pasture, and
through the belt of pinewood, he said never a word. But he thought all the
more on Florian’s counsel. Till that morning, he had never tried to face the
question himself: he liked the girl⁠—⁠that was all; she sang like a linnet; and
he loved to be near her. But the longer he stopped, the harder for her would
be the inevitable breaking off. Just beyond the pinewood Florian halted and
fronted him. “See here, Will,” he said, kindly, but with the world’s common
sense, “it isn’t that I care twopence myself what becomes of the girl⁠—⁠girls
like that are just made for you and me to play skittles with; if you meant her
any harm I wouldn’t for the world interfere with any other man’s little
fancies. All I want is to get you away from the place before you’ve time to
commit yourself. I use the other argument as an argumentum ad hominem
only. But as that it has its weight. The longer you stop, the harder it’ll be in
the end for her.”
Will drew a deep breath. His mind was made up now. “Very well, then,”
he said, slowly, though with an evident struggle; “if I must go, I must go. I
won’t haggle over a day. Let us make it to-morrow.”

CHAPTER X

HAIL, COLUMBIA!

And next morning, indeed, saw them safe at Innsbruck.
’Twas a pull to get away; Will frankly admitted to his own soul he felt it
so. But he saw it was right, and he went accordingly. Linnet, he knew, had
grown fond of him in those few days; when he asked her once how it was
she liked Franz Lindner less now than formerly, she looked up at him with
an arch smile, and, after a second’s pause, made the frank avowal: “Perhaps
it’s because now . . . I think Englishmen nicer.” At the moment his heart had
come up in his mouth with pleasure, as will happen with all of us when a
pretty woman lets us see for ourselves she really likes us. But he must go all
the same: for Linnet’s sake⁠—⁠he must go: if illusion there were, he must at
once disillusion her.
As for Linnet herself, she accepted the separation much more readily, to
say the truth, than Will ever imagined she could. It half-piqued him, indeed,
to find how easily she seemed to acquiesce in the inevitable. She trembled
when he told her, to be sure, and tears started to her eyes; but she answered,
none the less, in a fairly firm voice, that she always knew the gnädige Herr
must go away in the end; that she hoped he would remember her wherever
he went; and she⁠—⁠with a deep sigh⁠—⁠she could never forget his kindness.
That, however, was all. Just a pressure of her fingers, just a kiss on his
hand, just a tear that dropped wet on his outstretched palm as she bent her
head over it in customary obeisance, and Linnet was gone, and he saw no
more of her that evening. In the morning when he stood at the door to bid
farewell to the household, he fancied her eyes looked red with crying. But
she grasped his hand hard, for all that, and said goodbye without flinching.
He gave a florin or two as Trinkgeld to each of the servants at the inn; but to
Linnet he felt he couldn’t give anything. She was of different mould. Linnet
noticed the omission herself, with a glistening eye⁠—⁠and took it, as it was
meant, for a social distinction.
The plain truth was, she had always expected Will must soon go away
from her. Nor was she indeed as yet what one might fairly call quite in love
with him. The very distance between them seemed to forbid the feeling. He
was kind, he was sympathetic, he was musical, he was a gentleman, he
divined her better qualities, her deeper feelings; he spoke to her more
deferentially and with truer respect than any of her own equals had ever yet
spoken to her; she couldn’t help feeling flattered that he should like to come

out upon the hillside to talk with her; but, as yet, she hardly said to herself
she loved him. If she had, what good? Was it likely such a great gentleman
from over the seas would care to marry a mere Tyrolese milkmaid? Was it
likely, if he did, the wirth and the priest would allow her to marry a
Protestant Englishman?
So, from the very outset, save as a passing affection, Will Deverill stood
wholly outside poor Linnet’s horizon. She regarded him as a pleasant but
short-lived episode. Besides, light loves are the rule with the alp-girl. It was
quite in the nature of things for Linnet that a man should take a liking to
her, should pay her brief court, should expect from her far greater favours
than ever Will Deverill expected, and should give her up in the end for a
mere freak of fancy. That was the way of the Zillerthal! So, though the
thorn had gone deep, she accepted her fate as just what one might have
anticipated, and hardly cried for an hour in her own bed at night, to think
those sweet mornings on the pasture by the pinewood were to be over for
ever. For of course, in the end, if the wirth so willed, she must marry herself
contentedly to Andreas Hausberger.
Acting on Florian’s advice, Will did not even tell his tremulous little
friend he was going to Innsbruck. “Better break it off at once,” Florian said,
with practical common-sense, “once for all and absolutely. No chance of
letters or any nonsense of that sort⁠—⁠if the dulcinea can write, which of
course is doubtful.” And Will, having made up his mind to the wrench,
acquiesced in this sage council. So for Linnet, the two strangers who had
loomed so large, and played so leading a part on the stage of her little life
for one rapturous fortnight, vanished utterly, as it were, at a single breath,
like a dissolving cloud, into the infinite and the unknowable.
By seven that night, the young Englishmen found themselves once more
in the full flood of civilisation. The electric light shed its beams on their
hotel; a Parisian chef de cuisine turned out sweetbreads and ices of
elaborate art to pamper their palates. Once more, Florian donned with joy
the black coat of Bond Street. They had penetrated the Zillerthal with their
knapsacks on their backs; but two leather portmanteaus, enclosing the fuller
garb of civilised life, awaited their advent at Innsbruck. Thus restored to
society, with a rosebud in his buttonhole, the dainty little man descended
radiant to the salle-à-manger. He welcomed the change; after three whole
weeks of unadulterated Nature, he had tired of Arcadia. And he loved
tables-d’hôte: ’twas a field for the prosecution of social conquests. “A man

goes there on his merits,” he said briskly to Will, as they dressed for dinner,
“neither handicapped nor yet unduly weighted. Nobody knows who he is,
and he knows nobody. So he starts there on the flat, without fear or favour;
and if at the end of ten minutes he hasn’t managed to make himself the
centre of a conversational circle, he may retire into private life as a social
failure.”
On this particular evening, however, in spite of several brilliant and
manful efforts, Florian didn’t somehow succeed in attracting an audience
quite so readily as usual. The environment was against him. On his right sat
a lady whom he discovered by a side glance at the name written legibly on
the napkin ring by her plate, to be the Honourable Mrs Medway, and who
was so profoundly filled with a sense of the importance of her own
Honourableness that she feared to contaminate herself or her daughter by
conversation with her neighbours till she had satisfied her mind by sure and
certain warranty that they too belonged to the Right Set in England.
Pending proof to that effect, her answers to his questions were both curt and
monosyllabic. This nettled Florian, who prided himself with truth on his
extensive knowledge of all the “smart people.” To his left, beyond Will, on
the other hand, sat a stolid-looking gentleman of nonconformist exterior and
provincial garb, whose conversation, though ample, betrayed at times the
inelegant idiom and accent of the Humber. Him Florian the silver-tongued
carefully avoided. Opposite, was a vacant place, on either side of which sat
two young girls of seventeen or thereabouts in the acutest stage of giggling
inarticulateness. Florian listened, and despaired. Here was a coterie, indeed,
for a brilliant talker and a man of culture!
But just as they finished the soup, to his intense relief, a ray of light
seemed to pierce of a sudden the gathering gloom of the dinner table. The
drawing-room door opened, and through its portal a Vision of Beauty in an
evening dress floated, Hellenic goddess-wise, into the salle-à-manger. It
made its way straight to the vacant chair, nodded and smiled recognition to
the bread-and-butter gigglers and the Honourable Mrs Medway, bowed
demurely, continental-way, to the newly come strangers, and glided off at
once, without a pause or break, into a general flow all round of graceful,
easy conversation. Florian gazed, and succumbed. This was a real live
woman! Ripe, but not too ripe, soft and rounded of outline, with a
bewitching mouth, a row of pearly teeth, and a cheek that wore only its own
natural roses, she might have impressed at first sight a less susceptible heart

by far than the epicurean sage’s. As she seated herself, she drew from her
pocket a little cardboard box, which she handed with a charming smile to
one of the giggling inarticulates. “Those are the set you admired, I think,”
she said, with unconscious grace. “I hope I’ve got the right ones. I was
passing the shop on my way back from my drive, and I thought I’d just drop
in and bring them back as you liked them so.”
The giggling inarticulate gave a jerky little scream of unmixed delight
as she opened the box and took out from it with tremulous hands a pretty set
of coral necklet, brooch, and earrings. “Not for me!” she cried, gasping;
“not for me⁠—⁠for a present! You don’t really mean to give them to me!
They’re too lovely, too delicious!”
“Yes, I do,” the Vision of Beauty responded, beaming. “I wanted to give
you some little souvenir some time before you went, and I didn’t know
what you’d like; so, as you said you admired these, I thought I’d best go in
at once as I passed and buy them. They’re pretty, aren’t they?”
Florian eyed them with the lenient glance of a man of taste who
appraises and appreciates a beautiful woman’s selection. When the bread-
and-butter gigglers had exhausted upon them their slender stock of
laudatory adjectives⁠—⁠their oh’s and just look’s, and dear me, aren’t they
beautiful’s⁠—⁠he broke in with his bland smile, and, laying the necklet in a
curve on the white tablecloth before him, began to discourse with much
unction in the Florianic tongue, on the æsthetic points of this pretty trifle.
For it was a pretty necklet, there was no denying that; its lance-like
pendants were delicately shaped and most gracefully arranged; it was one of
those simple half-barbaric designs which retain to our day all the naïve
beauty of primitive unsophisticated human workmanship. Florian found in
it reminiscences of Eve in Eden. And he said so in that luxuriantly florid
style of which he was so great and so practical a master. He called attention
with suave tones to the distinctly precious suggestions of archaic influence
in the shaping of the pendants; to the exquisite nature of coral as a
decorative object, cast up blushing on our shores by the ungarnered sea⁠—⁠a
material whose use we inherit from our innocent ancestors, when wild in
woods the noble savage ran, his limbs untrammelled by clinging
draperies⁠—⁠when beauty unadorned was adorned the most in the subtle and
sinuous curves of its own lissome figure. Necklets and armlets, he
observed, with one demonstrative white forefinger held poised above the
salmon, are the string-courses, so to speak, of this our natural human

architecture; they serve to emphasise and throw out into stronger relief the
structural points of the grand design, to call attention to the exquisite native
fulness of a faultless torso.
The giggling inarticulates dropped their chins and stared. They were not
quite sure whether such talk was proper. But the Vision of Beauty, more at
home in the world, was not in the least alarmed at Florian’s torrent of
eloquence. On the contrary, she answered him back, as he himself remarked
a little later to Will, like the lords of the council, with grace, wisdom, and
understanding. Florian brightened, and flowed on. He loved a listener who
could toss the ball back to him as fast as he tossed it. And the Vision of
Beauty answered him back with lightning speed, and bore her share with
credit in the conversation. It was evident as she went on that she knew her
Europe. Was it Munich Florian touched upon with the light hand of his
craft?⁠—⁠she discoursed of the Van der Weydens and Crivellis in the
Pinakothek, like one to the manner born, and had views of her own which
were bold, if not prudent, about the meaning and arrangement of the
Aeginetan marbles. Was it Florence he attacked?⁠—⁠she was at home at San
Marco, and knew her way like a Baedeker round the rooms at the Pitti. Will
listened and marvelled, talking little himself, but giving Florian and the
Vision of Beauty their heads. It surprised him much to find one female
brain could store in its teeming cells so much miscellaneous knowledge.
At last, at a brief break in Florian’s flood of speech, Will found space to
inquire, for a purpose of his own, “Would you mind my asking where you
got that necklet?”
The Vision of Beauty handed the lid of the box to him. It bore, on a
label, the name and address of the jeweller at whose shop she had bought it.
“It’s on the way up,” she said, carelessly, “to this hotel from the city.”
That one Shibboleth betrayed her. Florian started in surprise. “Why,” he
cried with open eyes, “then you must be an American.”
The beautiful stranger smiled and nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said with
marked emphasis, as if to clinch the assertion of her western nationality. “I
am an American, and I don’t want to hide it. But you pay what you consider
a compliment to the purity of my English all the same, if you mean that till
now you haven’t even suspected it.”
Florian made some politely condescending remark, of the sort so
obnoxious to the late Mr Lowell, as to the correctness and delicacy of her

English accent, and then, in order to show himself quite abreast of the
times, inquired expansively if she knew the Van Rensselaers.
“No; I haven’t had that pleasure,” the Vision of Beauty answered, curtly.
“The Livingstones, perhaps?” Florian adventured, in tentative tones.
The Vision shook her head.
“My friends the Vanderbilts?” Florian essayed once more, eager to find
a connecting link. “I stayed with them at Newport.”
“No; nor yet the Vanderbilts,” the Vision answered, smiling.
Florian paused and reflected. “Ah, then, you’re from Boston, no doubt,”
he suggested, with charitable promptitude. The fine friends he had
mentioned, at whose houses he had stopped, were all New Yorkers.
“No; not from Boston,” the Vision answered with prompt negation.
“Washington, I suppose?” Florian adventured again. They were the only
three places a self-respecting American could admit she came from without
shipwreck of her dignity. He would not pay so much grace and eloquence
the very bad compliment, as it seemed to him, of supposing it could
“register” from St Louis or New Orleans.
The pretty woman smiled once more, a self-restrained smile. “I come
from New York,” she said, simply. “I’ve lived there long. It’s my native
place. But there are a good many of us there who don’t aspire to know the
Roosevelts or the Livingstones.”
Florian withdrew, with quiet tact, from this false departure. He led aside
the conversation, by graceful degrees, to the old Dutch families, the New
England stock⁠—⁠Emerson, Longfellow, Channing, the Concord set:
Howells, James, and Stedman, the later American poets. On these last he
waxed warm. But the Vision of Beauty, herself cosmopolitan to the core,
was all for our newest school of English bards. She doted on Lang and
Austin Dobson.
“And have you seen the last Illustrated?” she asked, after awhile, with a
burst of enthusiasm. “It’s on the table in the salon there. And there are three,
oh, such lovely, lovely stanzas in it,⁠—⁠‘Among Alps,’ by Will Deverill.”
Her words sent a thrill of pleasure through Will’s modest soul. He had
published but little, and ’twas seldom he heard his own name thus
familiarly unhandled. Still, a harassing doubt possessed his soul. Could the
Vision of Beauty have seen his name in the visitors’ book of the hotel,
noticed the coincidence with the lines in the Illustrated, which he had sent
from the Zillerthal, and managed this little coup with feminine adroitness,

on purpose to deceive him? Yet she didn’t look guileful. With poetic
trustfulness, he cast the evil suggestion at once behind him. “I’m so glad
you liked them,” he said, timidly, looking down at his plate, and playing in
nervous jerks with his fork in the chicken. “I wrote them in the Tyrol here.
They’re fresh-fed from the glaciers.”
The Vision laid down her knife and fork and stared at him, speechless.
“You’re not Will Deverill,” she exclaimed, in some excitement, after a
moment’s pause.
“That’s my name,” Will answered, somewhat abashed, still perusing his
plate. “But I’m very little used to⁠—⁠to⁠—⁠to meeting people who have heard
of it.”
The pretty American clasped her hands with delight “Well, I am glad to
meet you,” she said, “though I’d have given you the benefit of the Mr, of
course, if I’d known it was you. I just love your verses. I have ‘Voices from
the Hills’ in my box upstairs, bound in calf, this minute.”
“No; not really?” Will cried, with a young author’s delight at
unexpected recognition.
“I’ll go upstairs after dinner and fetch it down to show you,” his pretty
admirer answered, with some pride. “And your friend, too, is he a poet?”
“In soul; in soul only!” Florian interposed, airily, dashing in at a
tangent; for it irked him thus to play second fiddle to Will’s first hand, and
he longed to assert his “proper position.” “I string no sonnets; I play no
harmonies; I take the higher place. I sit on a critical throne, weighing and
appraising all arts impartially. Deverill rhymes; another man paints; a third
man strums; a fourth acts, or carves stone⁠—⁠and all for me. I exercise none
of these base handicrafts myself; but I live supreme in the Palace of Art
they build, subordinating each in due place to my soul’s delight, like a
subtle architect.”
“Just the same as all the rest of us,” the pretty American put in,
interrupting his period. “We all do that. We sit still and listen. The difficulty
is⁠—⁠to produce, like Mr Deverill.”
Florian stood aghast. To think a mere woman should thus slight his
pretensions! But the pretty American, disregarding him, turned to Will once
more. “And your friend’s name?” she said, interrogatively.
“My friend’s name,” Will answered, “is Florian Wood. You must know
it.”

“Ah, Mr Florian Wood,” the pretty stranger echoed; “I’ve heard of him,
of course. I’m glad to meet him. It’s so nice to see people in the flesh at last
one has often heard talked about.”
“But you’ve heard about everybody, Mrs Palmer,” the first giggling
inarticulate interposed, with a gurgle of admiration.
Florian clapped his hand to his head in theatrical disappointment. “Mrs
Palmer!” he cried, markedly. “Did I hear aright, Mrs Palmer? This is indeed
a blow! Then, I take it, you’re married!”
From anyone else on earth, the remark would have been rude; from
Florian, it was only exaggerated compliment. The Vision of Beauty
accepted it as such with American frankness.
“Well, you needn’t go and take a draught of cold poison offhand,” she
retorted, a little saucily, “for there’s still a chance for you. Remember, a
woman may be maid, wife, . . . or widow.”
“Dear me,” Florian ejaculated, half-choking himself in his haste, “I
never thought of that. You don’t mean to say⁠——”
“Yes, I do,” Mrs Palmer responded, cutting him short with a merry nod.
“Any time these last five years. Now, you’re sorry you spoke. Mr Deverill,
may I trouble you to pass the mustard?”

CHAPTER XI

PRIVATE INQUIRY

During the rest of the young men’s stay at Innsbruck the pretty American
was, as Florian remarked, “a distinct feature.” Such is the fickleness of
man, indeed, that she almost superseded poor Linnet in their minds as an
object of interest. She was attractive beyond a doubt; she was clever; she
was lively; and she was so delighted to make a real live poet’s
acquaintance, that Will hardly knew how to receive her almost obtrusive
attentions. She brought him butter in a lordly dish, as Florian phrased it.
That same evening, in the salon, according to promise, she came down with
“Voices from the Hills,” Will’s thin little volume of fugitive verse, which
she had had gorgeously bound in red calf in Paris, and made that sensitive
young bard blush up to his eyes with modesty, by insisting on pointing out
which pieces she liked best, in a voice that was audible to half the guests in
the establishment. Ossian’s Tomb was her favourite⁠—⁠she knew that one by
heart; but Khosru Khan was sweet too; and Sister Clare made her cry; and
then Gwyn!⁠—⁠ah, that dear Gwyn was just too lovely for anything!
And yet, Will liked her. In spite of her open praise, and his blushes, he
liked her. The surest way to a poet’s heart is to speak well of his poetry. And
besides, he said to himself, Mrs Palmer had discrimination. She noted in his
verse the metrical variety, the pictorial skill, the strong sense of
colour⁠—⁠just the qualities of his poor muse on which he himself most prided
himself. No artist cares for praise except for those characteristics of his art
which he feels to be his strong ones. Mrs Palmer gave Will that, and he
liked the incense.
Florian had said at St Valentin that Will needed change of air, change of
scene, change of company. And at Innsbruck he got them. The pretty
American, having found her poet, didn’t mean to let him slip again too soon
from her clutches. With the pertinacity of her compatriots, she fastened
herself at once upon the two young Englishmen. Not obtrusively, to be sure,
not ungracefully, not awkwardly, not as a European woman might have
done the same thing, but with that occidental frankness and oblivion of sex
which makes up half the charm of the charming American. The very next
morning, at the early breakfast, she happened to occupy a small table close
by them. They chatted together through the meal; at the end of it Will
mentioned, in a casual sort of way that he was going down the street to the
shop where Mrs Palmer had bought the coral necklet. The dainty young

widow seized her cue. “I am going down that way myself,” she said. “Let
me come and show you. I won’t take a minute to run up for my hat. I’m not
one of those women who can never go out for a morning stroll without
spending half-an-hour before their mirrors, tittivating.” And, in spite of
Will’s assurance that he could find the shop very well by himself, she was
as good as her word, and insisted on accompanying them.
She had been charming in evening dress; she was more charming still in
her girlish straw hat and neat tailor-made costume, as she tripped lightly
downstairs to them. Florian, by her side, while they walked through the
streets, cast sheep’s eyes askance up at her. Even Will, more mindful of
poor Linnet’s desertion, was not wholly insensible to that taking smile,
those pearly white teeth, that dainty small nose, those rounded contours.
They turned down the road in the direction of the Maria-Theresien Strasse.
Will knew of old that quaintest and most picturesque of European High
Streets, with its queer gabled roofs, its rococo façades, its mediæval towers,
its arcades and pillars. But to Florian, it all came with the added charm of
novelty. Twice or thrice on their way, the spirit moved him to stop and
perorate. Each time, the pretty widow cut him short at once with some
quick retort of truly American practicality. At the shop, Will selected a
second necklet, exactly like the one Mrs Palmer had chosen. “I gave her
nothing before I came away,” he said, turning to Florian, and only
indicating by that very indefinite pronoun, the intended recipient of his
beautiful gift. “One couldn’t give her money. ’Twould have been a positive
insult. But this ought to look well on that smooth brown neck of hers.”
“For your sister, of course,” Mrs Palmer said, pointedly.
“No; not for my sister,” Will admitted, with a quiet smile. “For a girl at
the inn we’ve just left at St Valentin.”
Mrs Palmer said “Oh!” ’Twas an American oh. It deprecated the
fact⁠—⁠and closed the episode. Cosmopolitan though she was, it surprised
her not a little that Will should allude to such persons in a lady’s company.
But there! these poets, you know⁠—⁠so many things must be condoned to
them. Because they have loved much, much must be forgiven them. They
have licence to break hearts and the most brittle of the commandments, with
far less chance of blame than their even Christians.
Will’s transaction completed, Mrs Palmer proceeded to buy a second
similar set on her own account, for presentation to the second of the
giggling inarticulates. “Poor girl!” she said, good-humouredly, “she looked

so envious last night when I gave the other to Eva Powell, I couldn’t bear to
think I’d left her out in the cold. Thirty florins, I think you said? Ah, yes;
that’s twelve dollars. Not much to make a poor little girl so happy!”
From this, and various other circumstances which occurred in the course
of their first few days at Innsbruck, it began to dawn dimly upon Florian’s
open mind that their American friend, though she knew not the Van
Rensselaers, the Vanderbilts, and the Livingstones, must have been
“comfortably left” by the late Mr Palmer. It was clear she had money for
every whim and fancy. She took frequent drives, up the Brenner or down
the Innthal, in a roomy two-horse carriage specially ordered from the livery
stables; and she always gave a seat to one at least of the giggling
inarticulates; and then, “on the girl’s account, you know,” with good-
natured zeal, asked Will and Florian to take part in the expedition. “It’s so
good for them, of course,” she said, “to see a little, when they can, of young
men’s society. They’re each of them here with an invalid mamma⁠—⁠throat
and lungs, poor things⁠—⁠you know the kind of person; and before I came,
they had nobody to talk to, not even one another, for they were far too much
afraid of a mutual snub ever to utter a syllable. I’ve tried to bring them out a
bit, and make life worth living for them. But without a young man⁠—⁠at that
age⁠—⁠no amusement’s worth anything. Do come, Mr Deverill⁠—⁠there’s a
good soul, just to humour them.”
And Will and Florian, it must be candidly allowed, fell in with a good
grace with her philanthropic projects. Though, to be sure, when once the
carriage got under way, they seemed much more desirous of amusing the
pretty American herself, than of seconding her schemes for drawing out the
latent conversational powers of the giggling inarticulates, who contented
themselves chiefly with leaning back in their seats, and listening open-
mouthed to Florian’s flamboyant disquisitions. That, however, is a detail.
Will attempted at first to pay his share of the carriage; but such interference
with her plans Mrs Palmer most manfully and successfully resisted. She
wanted to give the girls a little outing, she said; Will might come or he
might stop; but she wasn’t going to let any other person pay for her well-
meant attention to her poor little protégées. To that point she stuck hard,
through thick and thin. They must come as her guests if they came as
anything.
From this, and sundry other events that came under his knowledge by
occulter channels, Florian grew strengthened in his idea that the late Mr

Palmer, whoever he might have been, had at least “cut up well,” and, what
was more to the point, had cut up entirely in his widow’s favour. Now this
was business; for Florian, incurious as he was by nature where mere gossip
was concerned, liked to know what was what in the matrimonial market. As
he was wont to put it sweetly to his friends at the Savile, he wasn’t going to
throw himself away on a woman for nothing. He had an income of his own,
just sufficient to supply him with the bare necessaries of life⁠—⁠such as stalls
at the opera and hansoms ad libitum; and, this being so, he had no intention
of giving up that singular franchise which young men call “their liberty,”
except in return for valuable consideration. But if good things were going,
he liked at least to know of them; some day, perhaps, if some lady bribed
him high enough, he might possibly consent to retire by her side into the
Philistine gloom of wedded respectability.
So he pushed his inquiries hard into the Vision’s antecedents, wholly
without effect, during the first few days of their stay at Innsbruck.
A few nights later, however, as they sat in the salon after a long day’s
tramp to the summit of the Patscher Kopf, Florian found himself cast
casually into conversation with an American old maid, belonging to the
most virulent type and class of old maidhood⁠—⁠“of the cat-kind, catty,” he
said afterwards to Will Deverill; one of those remarkable persons who have
pervaded cosmopolitan hotels for years together, and are on intimate terms
with the domestic skeletons in every cupboard. Miss Beard, as she was
called, favoured Florian at full length with the histories and antecedents of
the giggling inarticulates, their papas and mammas, and all their forebears;
informing him with much gusto how one of them had paid ninepence in the
pound to his creditors, and another had been cashiered from the navy for
embezzlement. Then she proceeded in the same strain to demolish the
unprepossessing gentleman of nonconformist exterior, who had been guilty,
it seemed, of the social crime of retail business. Miss Beard was inclined,
indeed, to believe he was nothing more than a retired chemist; but she
wasn’t even sure⁠—⁠with hushed and bated breath⁠—⁠that it mightn’t be as bad
as grocery and provisions. All these, and many other unimportant details,
Florian’s soul endured, possessing itself in patience for many minutes
together, in the fervent hope that at last this living encyclopædia of
genealogical knowledge would come round to the character of the Vision of
Beauty.

“And Mrs Palmer, who sits opposite me,” he adventured gently after
awhile, when Miss Beard reached a pause in her caustic comments; “she
seems a nice little thing in her way, though, of course, a mere butterfly. She
comes from New York. I suppose you know her?”
Miss Beard drew herself up with that offended dignity which only an
American woman of the “very best class” can exhibit in perfection when
you suspect her of an acquaintance with a person moving in a social grade
less exalted than the sphere she herself revolves in. “I don’t know her,” she
said, markedly, “but I know, of course, who she is. She’s the widow of
Palmer⁠—⁠the well-known Palmer⁠—⁠the notorious Palmer, who⁠—⁠but
there!⁠—⁠you’ve been in the States; you must know all about him.”
“Not Palmer the murderer!” Florian exclaimed in surprise. “She’s too
young for that, surely.”
“No; not Palmer the murderer,” Miss Beard responded in a very shrill
voice with considerable acerbity. “He was at least a gentleman. I can’t say
as much for this lady’s husband. She’s the widow of Palmer, the dry-
goodsman in Broadway.”
“Oh, indeed,” Florian cried, deeply interested in this discovery⁠—⁠for it
meant much money. “I remember the place well⁠—⁠a palatial building in the
Renaissance style at the corner of a street near the junction with Fifth
Avenue. These princes of commerce in your Western world represent in our
midst to-day the great signiors of the Adriatic who held the gorgeous East in
fee, and whose Gothic façades, rich in arch and tracery, still line the long
curve of the Grand Canal for us. They are the satraps of finance. The world
in our times is ruled once more⁠—⁠as in Venice of old, in the heyday of its
splendour⁠—⁠by the signet-ring of the merchant. Palmer was one of these⁠—⁠a
paladin of silken bales, a Doge Dandolo of Manhattan, a potentate in the
crowded marts of the Samarcand of the Occident.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Miss Beard retorted in an acrid tone,
eyeing him sternly through her pince-nez, “but I say he was a dry-
goodsman.”
Florian descended at a bound from the open empyrean to the solid earth
of commonplace. “Well, at any rate, he was rich,” he said, letting the
paladins slide. “He must have died worth millions.”
“His estate was proved,” Miss Beard said, curtly, “at a sum in dollars
which totals out⁠—⁠let me see⁠—⁠fives into 35⁠—⁠ah, yes, to exactly seven
hundred and eighty-four thousand pounds sterling.”

Florian gave a little gasp. “That’ll do,” he said, with slow emphasis.
“And he left it?” he suggested, after a second’s pause, with an interrogative
raising of his broad white forehead.
“And he left it, every cent,” Miss Beard responded, “without deduction
of any sort, to that fly-away little inanity.”
Florian drew a deep breath. “Then she’s rich,” he said, musing; “rich
beyond the utmost dreams of avarice.”
“Well, of course she is,” Miss Beard answered, with a sharp little snap,
as though every one knew that. “If she wasn’t, could she go tearing about
Europe as she does, herself and her maid, buying everything she sees, and
making presents right and left⁠—⁠to everyone she comes across. She’d give
her own soul away if anybody asked her for it. Little empty-headed fool!
She’s not fit to be trusted with the use of money. But, of course, one can’t
know her, however rich she may be. We draw the line in the States at
keeping shop. And, besides, she was never brought up among cultivated
people.”
As she spoke, Florian noted several things silently to himself. He noted,
first, that Mrs Palmer spoke the English tongue many degrees more
correctly, and more pleasantly as well, than her would-be critic. He noted,
second, that her very generosity was counted for blame to her by this
narrower nature. He noted, third, that in republican America, even more
than in monarchical and aristocratic England, Mrs Palmer’s cleverness, her
information, her reading, her culture, were as dust in the balance in
Society’s eyes, compared with the damning and indelible fact that her late
lamented husband had owned a dry-goods store. But, being a worldly-wise
man, Florian noted these things in his own heart alone. Externally, he took
no overt notice of them. On the contrary, he continued his talk in the same
bland and honey-sweet tone as ever. “Still, she’d be a catch in her way,” he
said, with a condescending smile, “for any man who didn’t object to
swallow her antecedents.”
“She would,” Miss Beard replied, with austere self-respect, “if people
care to mix in that sort of society. For myself, I’ve been used to a different
kind of life. I couldn’t put up with it.”
Florian was audacious. He posed the one last question he still wished to
ask, boldly. “And there’s no awkward clause, I suppose,” he said, without
even the apology of a blush, “in her husband’s will, of that nasty so-long-as-
my-said-wife-remains-unmarried character?”

Miss Beard took up her Galignani with crushing coldness. She didn’t
care to discuss such people’s prospects from such a standpoint. Their
matrimonial affairs were beneath her notice. For fine old crusted prejudice
of a social sort, commend me, so far as my poor knowledge goes, to the
members of good New Yorker families. “To the best of my knowledge and
belief,” she murmured, acridly, without raising her eyes, “the property’s left
for her own sole use and benefit, without any restriction. But I’m sure I
don’t know. If you want to find out you’d better ask her. I don’t burden my
mind with these people’s business.”
Then Florian knew the Vision of Beauty was a catch not to be despised
by a man of culture. Such wealth as that, no gentleman could decline, in
justice to himself, if she gave him the refusal of it.

CHAPTER XII

THE MADDING CROWD
Andreas Hausberger was a dictator. He kept his own counsel till the
moment of action grew ripe for birth in the womb of time; then, heeding no
man, he gave his orders. Three days after Will Deverill’s departure from St
Valentin, he called up Linnet to his office suddenly. “The dressmaker has
brought home your new costume,” he said in his curt way. “Go upstairs and
put it on. Then come down and let me see you.”
Linnet, much wondering what this mood might portend, went up to her
own room and tried on her new gew-gaws. Puffed white sleeves, laced
corset, crimson kirtle, high shoes, flowered kerchief at her bosom, silver
dirk in her hair; Linnet wasn’t over-vain, as girls go in this world, but
tricked out in such finery, she gazed in her glass, and, to tell the whole truth,
admired herself consumedly. If only her Englishman could have seen her in
that dress! But she stifled her sigh, and tripped lightly downstairs again,
with the buoyancy of youth, when conscious of a perfectly becoming
costume, for Andreas Hausberger’s scrutiny.
The wirth scanned her, well satisfied. “On Monday,” he said, briefly, in
that iron voice, “we set out on our tour, and go first to Innsbruck.”
It was earlier by a week than he at first intended; but he saw it would be
hard, if he stopped at St Valentin, to keep Fridolin’s hands from Franz’s
throat much longer. So, by way of minimising the adverse chances, he made
up his mind to start as soon as possible for his winter season. He meant to
begin modestly with entertainments at hotels among the Tyrolese winter
resorts, and the towns of the Riviera; and then, when his troupe had got
over its first access of stage fright, and grown used to an audience, to go
across for the summer to England or America.
So, for the next few days Linnet was busy as a bee with preparations for
her first journey into the great wide world outside the Zillerthal. As yet, her
native valley had bounded her view⁠—⁠she had never gone even as far as
Jenbach. Expectation and preparation kept her mind well employed during
that busy week, and prevented it from dwelling too much or too long on the
kindly Engländer, who had vanished from her ken across the sea to
England. For, that he had gone straight home, Linnet never even doubted.
On the afternoon of Andreas Hausberger’s exciting announcement, indeed,
a little registered parcel came by post for her to St Valentin. It bore the
postmark of Wilten, where Will had intentionally dropped it into the letter-

box, on purpose to conceal from her his exact whereabouts. Linnet scanned
it close, and read the name correctly, but was too innocent of the
topography of her native country to know that Wilten is the name of a
village on the outskirts of Innsbruck. When she asked Andreas Hausberger
where Wilten was, a little later in the day, without showing him the
postmark, he confirmed her belief by answering at once that ’twas a town in
England, not far from Salisbury. So he had thought of her over sea, then,
and sent her this beautiful costly present from his own country. She tried it
on that night before her tiny square mirror. As Will had rightly judged, it set
off the rich tints of her creamy brown neck to the best advantage.
A beautiful gift! A real lady might have worn it! Later on, when Linnet
had diamonds and rubies at command, there was no trinket she prized
among all her jewels like Will Deverill’s coral.
At last the eventful morning itself arrived. The little troupe set out on
foot down the mountain to Mairhofen. There, their boxes, sent on over-
night, awaited them. They drove in a large open brake to Jenbach⁠—⁠Andreas
Hausberger, Franz Lindner, Linnet herself, Philippina, and the two other
singers who composed the party. At Jenbach, they descended at the door of
the railway station. For the first time in her life, Linnet saw, half-alarmed, a
puffing and snorting machine, a sort of iron devil, breathing flames like
purgatory, burst with smoke and stench upon the crowd by the waiting-
room. Though she had heard all about it often enough before, and could see
for herself that this great scurrying creature, for all its noise and bustle, kept
rigidly to the rails as it approached the platform, she yet drew back in pure
physical terror and surprise at the swiftness and irresistibility of the fire-
fiend’s motion.
She had scant time to think, however, for scarce had it come to rest
when Andreas Hausberger, little heeding, bundled them all
unceremoniously into a third-class compartment; and before Linnet had
leisure to recover her self-possession, the engine had uttered one wild
discordant shriek, and with ringing of bells and rattlings of wheels in her
ears, she found herself, willy-nilly, beyond hope of release, whirled along at
the break-neck pace of what you and I know as an Austrian slow train, over
the jolting rails, up the broad Inn valley.
In spite of her terror⁠—⁠for she knew the railway as yet chiefly by hearing
reports of collisions and accidents⁠—⁠Linnet enjoyed to the full that first
steam-borne journey. She whirled past turreted towers like Hall and

Volders, which to you and me commend themselves as the absolute
quintessence of old-world quaintness, but which, to Linnet’s young eyes,
accustomed only to St Valentin and the grassy Alps, envisaged themselves
rather in glowing hues as the kingdoms of the world and all their glory.
They had been late to start, and their drive from Mairhofen had been
tolerably leisurely, so dusk was closing in when they arrived at Innsbruck.
Oh, the bustle, the din, the whirling awe of that arrival! Electric lamps
lighted up the broad Platz in front of the station; on either side rose great
hotels, grander and more palatial than any buildings on earth Linnet’s poor
little fancy had ever yet dreamed of. Not to one of these, however, of
course, did Andreas Hausberger take his little troupe of minstrels. But even
the humbler inn on the south side of the Theresien Strasse, to which they
repaired on foot, bearing their boxes between them, seemed to Linnet’s
inexperienced and impressionable eye a most princely caravanserai. After
the noise and bustle in that busy railway junction, which made her brain
whirl with the unaccustomed dizziness of a great city, the comparative rest
and quiet of the Golden Eagle seemed a positive relief both of mind and
body. That night she slept little. Her head swam with excitement; for this
was the first step on her journey through the world, which might lead her
perhaps at last to England. And in England, she thought to herself once or
twice with a little thrill, who could tell but peradventure she might meet . . .
Will Deverill?
For she knew little as yet of how big the world is, and how long you
may live in it, going to and fro, without necessarily knocking up against this
one or that of its component units.
Next morning they rose betimes, and went out into the street to view the
city. For to Linnet, as to Mrs Palmer, a city it was⁠—⁠and a very great one.
Such streets and streets seemed to frighten and appal her. Florian had
admired in that picturesque old capital of a mountain land, the antiquated
tone, the eighteenth-century flavour, the mediæval survivals, the air as of a
world elsewhere gone from us utterly. But to Linnet, though it was beautiful
and impressive too, it was above all things magnificent, grandiose, stately,
imposing. She gazed with open eyes at the Golden Roof, admired the
bronze statues at the base of the Anna Column, looked up with silent awe at
the front of the Landhaus, and thought the Rudolfsbrunnen, with its
attendant griffins and dragons, a wonderful work of art for the world’s
delectation.

Philippina went with her, her companion on the alp. Linnet noticed with
much surprise⁠—⁠for she knew not as yet the difference in fibre between
them⁠—⁠that Philippina, though as interested as herself in the shops and their
contents, seemed wholly unimpressed by these other and vastly more
attractive features of a civilised city. For Linnet had been gifted by nature,
to the fullest degree, with the profound Tyrolese artistic susceptibility.
Though her mind came to art as a blank page, it responded to the stimulus,
once presented to its ken, as the sensitive plate of a photographic camera
responds in every line to the inspiring picture.
As they strolled through the town, by Andreas Hausberger’s express
desire⁠—⁠for the wise impresario had arranged their first appearance for that
very evening, and wished the girls to come to it fresh, after a morning’s
exercise⁠—⁠they paid comparatively little heed to what most of us regard as
by far the most striking characteristic of Innsbruck⁠—⁠the great limestone
crags that seem on every side to tower and overhang the very roofs of the
city. They were accustomed, indeed, to crags, and made very small case of
them. It was the houses, the shops, the noise, the crowd, the gaiety, that
chiefly struck them. Innsbruck to Linnet was as a little Paris. But as they
went on their way through the bustling streets, they came at last to a church
door, which Linnet’s profound religious nature could hardly pass by without
one minute’s prayer for Our Lady’s aid at this critical turning-point of her
artistic history.
Philippina, nothing loth, for her part, opined it could do them no harm
to make favour above with the blessed saints for this evening’s work by a
little Pater Noster. The blessed saints dearly love attentions: much may be
done with them by a small wax candle! So they opened the door, and
stepped into the Hofkirche.
Even those of us who know well the world and its art, can remember
vividly the strange start of surprise with which we gazed round for the first
time on that oddest and most bizarre of Christian temples. It isn’t so much
beautiful, indeed, as unexpected and startling. To push open the church door
and find oneself at once ringed round and guarded close, as it were, by that
great circle of mailed knights and bronze-wimpled ladies, who watch the
long sleep of the kneeling Maximilian on his cenotaph in the centre, gives
one a thrill of a novel sort from which some tinge of dim awe can hardly
ever be wholly absent. There they stand, on their low pedestals, a
congregation of bronze ancestors round their descendant’s

tomb⁠—⁠Theodoric the Ostrogoth and King Arthur the Briton, Mary of
Burgundy and Eleonora of Portugal⁠—⁠strange efforts of struggling art in its
first faint steps towards the attainment of the beautiful⁠—⁠naïf, ungainly,
crude, rising only once or twice within measurable distance of the ideal in
the few figures cast in metal by Peter Vischer of Nuremberg. But to Linnet,
a woman grown, instinct with the innate artistic taste of her countrymen, yet
innocent till then of all forms of art save the saints and purgatories of her
mountain chapels, the Hofkirche was a glimpse of some new and unseen
world of infinite possibilities. She went through it all piecemeal with open-
mouthed interest. Philippina could only laugh at the quaint vizors of the
knights, the quainter dresses of the ladies. But Linnet was almost shocked
Philippina should laugh at them. She herself half forgot her intended prayer
to Our Lady in her delight and surprise at those wonderful figures and those
beautiful bas-reliefs. She read all the names on the bases conscientiously;
they didn’t mean much to her, to be sure⁠—⁠her historical ideas didn’t get as
far as “Clovis, King of the Franks,” or even as “Count Frederick of Tyrol
with the Empty Pockets”; but in a vague sort of way she gathered for
herself that these were statues of archdukes and mighty heroes, keeping
watch and ward silently round the great dead emperor who knelt in the
centre on his marble sarcophagus. Good luck, too, attended them. The little
hump-backed sacristan, seeing two pretty girls looking through the grating
at the reliefs on its sides, relaxed his stony heart without the customary
kreuzers, and admitted them within the railing to inspect at their leisure
those exquisite pictures in marble which Thorwaldsen declared the most
perfect work of their kind in the whole of Christendom. Philippina found
the dresses quite grotesquely old-fashioned; but Linnet, hardly knowing
why she lingered so long, gazed at each scene in detail with the profoundest
interest.
While down in the town Linnet was thus engaged, high up in the hills
Will Deverill sat alone by Mrs Palmer’s side on an outcrop of rock near the
summit of the Lanser Kopf. Florian had gone off for a minute or two round
the corner by the mountain indicator, with the giggling inarticulates. Mrs
Palmer, pointing her moral with the ferrule of her parasol on the grass in
front of her, was discoursing to Will earnestly of his work and his prospects.
“I want to see you do something really great, Mr Deverill,” she said, with
genuine fervour, looking deep into his eyes; “something larger in scale and
more worthy of your genius⁠—⁠something that gives full scope to your

dramatic element. I don’t like to see you frittering away your talents on
these exquisite little lyrics⁠—⁠beautiful gems in their way, to be sure, but that
way not the highest. I want to see you settled down for a long spell of hard
work at some big undertaking⁠—⁠an epic, a play, a grand opera, a
masterpiece. I know you could do it if only you took the time. You should
go to some quiet place where there’s nothing to distract you, and make your
mind up to work, to write something more lasting than even that lovely
Gwyn, or that exquisite Ossian!”
Will looked down and sighed. ’Tis pleasant to be appreciated by a
beautiful woman. And every man thinks, if he had but the chance, he could
show the world yet the sort of stuff that’s in him. “I only wish I could,” he
answered, regretfully. “But I’ve my living to earn. That ties me down still to
the treadmill of journalism. When my holiday’s over⁠—⁠the first for two
years⁠—⁠I must get back once more, well content, to Fleet Street and
drudgery.”
Mrs Palmer sighed too. She felt his difficulty. Her parasol played more
nervously on the grass than before. She answered nothing, but she thought a
great deal. How small a matter for her to secure this young poet whom she
admired so much, six months of leisure for an immortal work⁠—⁠and yet,
how impossible! There was only one way, she knew that very well; and the
first step towards that way must come, not from her, but from this modest
Will Deverill.
’Twas a passing thought, half formed, or scarce half formed, in the
pretty widow’s mind. But nothing came of it. As she paused, and sighed,
and played trembling with her parasol, and doubted what to answer him,
Florian came up once more with the giggling inarticulates, “Well, Mr
Wood?” she said, looking up, just by way of saying something, for the
pause was an awkward one.
“Pardon me,” the mannikin of culture answered in his impressive way;
“my name is Florian.”
“But I can’t call you so,” Mrs Palmer answered, recovering herself, with
a merry little laugh.
“It’s usual in Society,” Florian responded with truth. “Just ask Will
Deverill.”
Will nodded assent. “Quite true,” he admitted. “Men and women alike
in London know him only as Florian. It’s a sort of privilege he has, an

attribute of his own. He’s arrogated it to himself, and the world at large
acquiesces in his whim, and grants it.”
“It makes things seem so much more real and agreeable, you see, as
Dick Swiveller said to the marchioness,” Florian continued blandly. “Now
suppose we five form an elective family, a little brotherhood of our own, a
freemasonry of culture, and call one another, like brothers and sisters, by
our Christian names only! Wouldn’t that be delightful! I’ve just been
explaining to Ethel and Eva that I mean henceforth to Ethel and Eva them.
Soul gets nearer to soul without these flimsy barriers. I’m Florian; this is
Will; and you, Mrs Palmer, your Christian name is⁠——?”
The pretty widow drew back with a little look of alarm. “Oh no,” she
said, shortly; “I never could tell you my given name for anything. It’s much
too dreadful.” She pulled out a pencil from the pocket at her side. “See
here,” she said to Will, writing down one word for him on the silver-cased
tablets that hung pendant from her delicate Oriental chatelaine, “there’s a
name, if you like, for two Puritan parents to burden the life of their poor
innocent child with! Don’t tell Mr Wood⁠—⁠or Florian if he wishes it; he’d
make fun of it behind my back, I’m perfectly certain. I know his way. To
him nothing, not even a woman’s name, is sacred.”
Will glanced at the word curiously. He couldn’t forbear a quiet smile.
“It’s bad enough, I must admit,” he answered, perforce. The Vision of
Beauty had been christened Jerusha!
“But I make it Rue for short,” she added, after a moment, with a
deprecating smile.
Florian caught at the word, enraptured. “The very thing!” he cried,
eagerly. “Capital, capital, capital! ‘There’s rue for you, and here’s some for
me: we may call it herb-o’-grace o’ Sundays.’ But Rue shall be your
weekday name for the Brotherhood. Let’s read the roll-call! Florian, Will,
Rue, Ethel, Eva! Those are our names henceforth among ourselves. We
scorn formalities! No mystery for us. We abolish the misters!”
And so indeed it was. As Will, Rue, and Florian, those three of the
Elective House knew each other thereafter.

CHAPTER XIII

A FIRST NIGHT

’Twas with no little trepidation that Linnet arrayed herself that eventful
night for her first appearance on this or any other public platform. When her
hair was dressed and her costume complete, Philippina declared, with good-
humoured admiration, she looked just lovely⁠—⁠for Philippina at least was
never jealous of her. And Philippina was right: Linnet did look beautiful.
She had tied her crossed kerchief very low about the neck, so as to leave her
throat bare for the better display of Will Deverill’s corals. They became her
admirably. Andreas Hausberger inspected his prima donna with well-
satisfied eye. The wise impresario had heard, of course, where the necklet
came from; but that didn’t in the least disturb his serenity. Will Deverill was
gone, evaporated into space; and the coral at least was “good for trade,”
inasmuch as it enhanced and set off to the utmost the nut-brown alp-girl’s
almost gipsy-like beauty. For the sake of trade, Andreas could pardon much.
And Will Deverill in England was no serious rival.
At eight o’clock sharp the concert was to begin at one of the big hotels.
To the guests in the house it was just a matter of “some music, I hear, to-
night⁠—⁠the usual thing, don’t you know⁠—⁠Tyrolese singers with a zither in
the salon.” But to Linnet, oh, the difference! It was the most important
musical event, the most momentous performance in the world’s history. She
trembled like a child at the thought of standing forth and singing her simple
mountain songs alone, in a fine-furnished room, before all those grand well-
dressed and well-fed Britons. She would have given thousands (in
kreuzers), if only she had them, to forego that ordeal. But Andreas
Hausberger said “You must,” and she had to obey him. And the blessed
Madonna, in Britannia metal, on an oval pendant, gave her courage for the
trial.
By eight o’clock sharp, then, the troupe trooped in. Electric light, red
velveted chairs, soft carpet on the floor, gilded mirrors by the mantelpiece
and opposite console. So much grandeur and magnificence fairly took poor
Linnet’s breath away. ’Twas with difficulty she faltered across the open
space to a chair by the table which was placed at one end of the room for
the use of the performers. Then she raised her eyes timidly⁠—⁠to know the
worst. Some twenty-five people, more or less listless all of them, composed
the audience. Some leaned back in their chairs and crossed their hands
resignedly, as who expects to be bored, and makes up his mind betimes to

bear his boredom patiently. Some read the latest Times or the Vienna papers,
hardly deigning to look up as the performers entered. ’Twas a lugubrious
function; more chilling reception prima donna never met with. Linnet
clutched the blessed Madonna in her pocket convulsively. One breath of
mild applause alone reached her ears. “Pretty girl,” one stout Briton
observed aloud in his own tongue to his plentiful mate. Linnet looked down
and blushed, for he was staring straight at her.
“Let’s sit it out, here,” Florian exclaimed in the smoking-room. The
folding doors stood open, so that all might hear; but their group sat a little
apart⁠—⁠Will, Rue, and he⁠—⁠in the farther corner, away from the draught, and
out of sight of the musicians. “It’s more comfortable so⁠—⁠just the family by
itself; and besides, I’ve a theory of my own that one should hear the zither
through an open door; it mitigates and modifies the metallic twang of the
instrument.”
Will and Rue were all acquiescence. Next to a tête-à-tête, a parti-à-trois
is the pleasantest form of society. So they kept their seats still, in the
rocking-chairs by the corner, and let the sound float idly in to them through
the open portal.
Linnet waited, all trembling. Thank heaven, it wasn’t her part to begin.
Franz Lindner came first with a solo on the zither. Bold, confident, defiant,
with his hat stuck a little on one side of his head, and his feather in his band,
turned Robbler-wise, wrong way, quite as jaunty as ever, Franz faced his
audience as if his life had been passed in first-class hotels, and an Edison
light had been the lamp of his childhood. Nothing daunted or disconcerted
by the novelty of the circumstances, he played his piece through with a
certain reckless brilliancy, wholly in keeping with the keynote of the
Tyrolese character. Florian observed outside, with connoiseur complacency,
that the fellow had brio. But the audience went on unmoved with its Times
and its Tagblatt. The audience was chilling; Franz Lindner, accustomed to
his own mercurial and magnetic fellow-countrymen, could hardly
understand it. His self-love was mortified. He had expected a triumph, a
sudden burst of wild applause; he received instead a faint clap of the hands
from Ethel and Eva, and an encouraging nod from the mercantile gentleman
of nonconformist exterior.
Franz sat down⁠—⁠a smouldering and seething volcano.
Then came Linnet’s turn. She rose, all tremulous, in her pretty costume,
with her beautiful face and her shrinking timidity. Old gentlemen peeped

askance over the edge of their papers at the good-looking girl; young ladies
took stock of her abundant black hair and her dainty kerchief. “She’s going
to sing,” Ethel whispered. “Isn’t she pretty, Eva? And just look, how very
odd, she’s got a necklet exactly like the ones Mrs Palmer gave us!”
As they gazed and gurgled, Linnet opened her mouth, and began her
song, quivering. She trembled violently, but her very trembling increased
the nightingale effect of those beautiful trills which form so marked a
feature in all Tyrolese singing. Her throat rose and fell; her clear voice
flooded the room with bell-like music. At the very first line, the old
gentlemen laid their Times contentedly on their laps, and beamed attention
through their spectacles; the old ladies let the knitting-needles stand idle in
their hands, and looked up with parted lips to listen. Andreas Hausberger
was delighted. Never in her life had Linnet sung so before. Occasion had
brought her out. And he could judge of her here more justly than at home;
he was quite sure now he had found a treasure.
But at the very first sound of her well-known voice, Will started from
his chair. He clapped his hands, fingers apart, to his cheeks in wonder, and
stared hard at Florian. Florian in return opened his eyes very wide, leaned
back in his seat with a sudden smile of recognition, and stared hard at Will,
with a certain amused indulgence. Then both with one voice cried out all at
once in surprise, “That’s Linnet!”
After that, it was Florian who first broke the forced silence. “I see in
this the finger of fate,” he murmured slowly. But Will didn’t want to see the
finger of fate, or any other abstraction; what he wished to see, then and
there, was his recovered Linnet. It was thoughtless, perhaps, to disturb her
song; but young blood is thoughtless. Without a moment’s hesitation, he
walked unobtrusively but hastily into the room in front, and took a seat near
the door, just opposite Linnet. Andreas Hausberger didn’t notice him, his
eyes were firmly fixed on Linnet’s face, watching anxiously to see how his
pupil would acquit herself in this her first great ordeal. But Linnet⁠—⁠Linnet
saw him, and felt from head to foot a great thrill break over her, like a wave
of fire, in long undulating movement. The wave rose from her feet and
coursed hot through her limbs and body, till it came out as a crimson flush
on her neck and chin and forehead; then it descended once more, thrilling
through her as it went, in long undulating movement from her neck to her
feet again. She felt it as distinctly as she could feel the blessed Madonna
clenched hard in her little fist. And she knew now she loved him. Her

Englishman was there, whom she thought she had lost; he had come to hear
her sing her first song in public!
Strange to say, the interruption didn’t impair her performance. For one
second she faltered, as her eyes met his; for one second she paused, while
the wave coursed through her. But almost before Andreas had time for
anxiety, she had recovered at once her full self-possession. Nay, more;
Will’s presence seemed actually to encourage her. She sang now with
extraordinary force and brilliancy; her voice welled from her soul; her notes
wavered on the air as with a sensible quivering.
That was all Will knew at the time, or the rest of the audience either.
They were only aware that a beautiful young woman in Tyrolese costume
was rendering a mountain song for them as they never before in their lives
had heard such simple melodies rendered. But to Linnet herself, a strange
thing had happened. As her eyes met Will’s, and that wave of fire ran
resistlessly through her, she was conscious of a weird sense she had never
felt before, a sudden failure of sound, a numb deadening of the music. It
was all a vast blank to her. She heard not a note she herself was uttering.
Her ears were as if stopped from without and within; she knew not how she
sang, or whether she sang at all; all she knew was, that, come what might,
for Will’s dear sake, she must keep on singing. The little access of terror
this weird seizure gave her in itself added much to the quality of her
performance. Unable to correct herself and keep herself straight in her
singing by the evidence of her ears, she devoted extravagant and incredible
pains in her throat and bosom to the mere muscular effort of note-
production and note-modulation. She sang her very best⁠—⁠for Will Deverill
was there to listen and applaud her! Franz Lindner! Who talked of Franz
Lindner now? She could pour out her whole soul in one dying swan-song,
now she had found once more her dear, kind, lost Engländer!
Instinctively, as she sang, her hand toyed with the coral⁠—⁠her left, for
with the right she still clasped Our Lady. A grand Frau had crept in just
behind Will’s back⁠—⁠a smiling, fair-haired Frau, all soft cheeks and dimpled
chin, and aglow with diamonds. She had seated herself on a chair by Will
Deverill’s side. Herr Florian, too, had crept in at the same time, and taken
the next place beside the fair-haired lady. They nodded and smiled and
spoke low to one another. At the sight, Linnet clutched the coral necklace
still harder. She was a very great lady⁠—⁠oh, the diamonds in her ears!⁠—⁠and
she talked to Will Deverill with familiar carelessness!

And as Linnet clutched the necklet, a shade broke over Rue Palmer’s
face. With a quick little gasp, she leaned across to Will, growing paler as
she recognised that familiar trinket. “Why, this is the girl,” she whispered,
“from the inn at St Valentin.”
And Will whispered back, all unconscious, “Yes; this is the girl. And
now you can see why I sent her the necklet!”
Through the rest of that song, there was breathless silence. At its end,
the old gentlemen and ladies, after a short hushed stillness, broke into a
sudden little burst of applause. There was a moment’s interval, and then the
demonstration renewed itself more vigorously than before. People turned to
one another and said, “What a beautiful voice!” or, “She sings divinely!”
By this time the loungers who held aloof in the smoking-room were
crowding about the doorway. A third time they clapped their hands; and at
each round of applause, Linnet, alternately pale and flushed with
excitement, dropped a little mountain curtsey, and half cried, and half
smiled at them. Her hearing had returned with the first symptom of clapping
hands; she could catch the vague murmur of satisfied criticism; she could
catch Andreas Hausberger’s voice whispering low in an aside, “Very well
sung, Linnet.” But her eyes were fixed on Will, and on Will alone; and
when Will framed his lips to one word of approbation, the hot blood rushed
to her cheeks in a torrent of delight that at last she had justified her
Engländer’s praises.
Linnet was the heroine of that evening’s performance. Andreas
Hausberger sang “He was a jäger bold”; Philippina, looking arch, twanged
the thankless zither. But the audience waited cold till ’twas Linnet’s turn
again. Then, as she rose, they signified their approval once more by another
little storm of applause and encouragement. Linnet curtsied, and curtsied,
and curtsied again, and stared straight at Will Deverill. This second time she
sang in less fear and trembling; she could hear her own notes now, and
Will’s face encouraged her. She acquitted herself, on the whole, even better
than before. Her rich pure voice, though comparatively untrained, exhibited
itself at its best in that pathetic little ballad of her native hills, “The Alp-
girl’s Lover.” She sang it most dramatically, with one hand pressed hard on
her heaving bosom. At the end, the audience clapped till Linnet was
covered with blushes. A mere scratch performance before some casual
tourists in the drawing-room of an hotel; but to Linnet, it came home as
appreciation and praise from the grandest of gentlefolk.

She sang three songs in all. Her hearers would gladly have made it six;
but Andreas Hausberger knew his trade, and stuck firm to his programme.
When all was finished, the foreign Herrschaft crowded round; Herr Florian
shook Linnet’s hand; Herr Will pressed it tenderly. The grand lady with the
diamonds was graciousness itself. “With a voice like that, my child,” she
said, “you shouldn’t be singing here; you should be training for the stage in
some great musical centre.” Many of the other guests, too, gathered round
and congratulated her. It was noised abroad in the room that this was the
pretty peasant girl’s absolute début, and that Mr Deverill and Mr Wood had
met her as a sennerin at an inn in the Zillerthal. More voices than one
praised her voice enthusiastically. But Will Deverill whispered low, “You
have done yourself justice. As I told you at St Valentin, so I tell you
again⁠—⁠Heaven only knows how high that voice may carry you.”
One thing Linnet noticed for herself, unprompted. That first appearance
in operatic peasant dress as a musician in a troupe, had raised her at a bound
in the scale of social precedence. At St Valentin, she was an alp-girl; at
Innsbruck, all those fine-dressed ladies and gentlemen accepted her at first
sight as a public singer. They spoke to her with a politeness to which she
was hitherto unused. They bent forward towards her with a quiet sort of
deference and equality which she felt instinctively the very same persons
would never have shown to the sennerin in her châlet. Their curiosity was
less frank; their questions were less blunt and better put than she was used
to. It was partly the costume, no doubt, but partly also the function: she was
a peasant girl in the Zillerthal; at Innsbruck she was a member of the
musical profession.
She had only a second or two with Will that night. While the other
guests crowded round her, uttering their compliments for the most part in
rather doubtful German, which Linnet answered (by Andreas Hausberger’s
wise advice) in her pretty broken English, Will dropped but a few words of
praise and congratulation. After all was over, however, and they were going
away for the night to the Golden Eagle, he stood at the door, bare-headed,
his hat in his hand, to say goodbye to her. Andreas Hausberger’s keen eye
watched their interview close. Will held Linnet’s hand⁠—⁠that transfigured
Linnet’s, in her snow-white sleeves and her corset-laced bodice⁠—⁠held it
lingering in his own with a mutual pressure, as he murmured, not too low
for Andreas to overhear (’twas wisest so), “I’m pleased to see you wore my
necklet.”

And Linnet, half-afraid how she should answer him aright, with
Andreas standing by and straining his ear for every word, replied in
German, with a timid smile, raising her eyes to his shyly, “I’m so glad you
were pleased. I wanted to wear it. It’s a beautiful present. Thank you so
very much for it.”
That was all. She had no more talk than just that with her Engländer.
But she went back to the Golden Eagle, and lay awake all night thinking of
him. Of him, and of the fair-haired Frau who sat smiling by his side. That
fair-haired Frau gave Linnet some pangs of pain. Not that she was jealous;
that ugliest of all the demons that beset human nature had no place, thank
Heaven, in Linnet’s great heart. But she thought to herself with a sigh how
much fitter for Will was that grand fair Frau than ever she herself could be.
How could she expect him to make anything of her, when he could sit and
talk all day long in great covered courts with grand ladies like that, his
natural equals? He could think, after the Frau, no more of her, than she,
after him, could think of Franz Lindner. And yet⁠—⁠and at that thought the
billowy wave of fire broke over her once more from head to foot⁠—⁠he had
left the grand lady in the room outside to come in and hear her song the
moment he recognised her!
In the salon that same evening, when Linnet was gone, Rue stood
talking for a minute by the fireside to Will Deverill. “She sings like an
angel,” the pretty American said, with unaffected admiration of the peasant
girl’s gifts. “What a glorious voice! Florian’s quite right. It’s a pity she
doesn’t get it properly trained at once. It’s fit for anything.”
“So I think,” Will answered, looking her frankly in the face. “She needs
teaching, of course⁠—⁠the very best teaching. But if only she gets it, I see no
reason to doubt she might do what she likes with it.”
“And she’s beautiful, too,” Rue went on, without one marring touch of
any feminine but. “How queenly she’d look as a Mary Stuart or a
Cleopatra! Your necklet suits her well.” She paused, and reflected a second.
“It’s a pity,” she went on, musingly, as if half to herself, “she shouldn’t have
the brooch and the earrings to match it!”
And next day, sure enough, at the Golden Eagle, about one o’clock,
when Linnet went up to her own room after early dinner, she found on her
dressing-table a small cardboard box containing some coral ornaments to go
with the necklet, and this little inscription in a feminine hand inside
it:⁠—⁠“For Linnet, from one who admired last night her beautiful singing.”

Then Linnet knew at least that the fair-haired lady too had a great heart,
and owed her no grudge for the possession of Will Deverill’s necklet. For
she divined by pure instinct what admirer had sent them.

CHAPTER XIV

AND IF FOR EVER

“It’s no use wasting words,” Florian observed, with decision. “As our old
friend Homer justly remarks, ‘Great is the power of words; wing’d words
may make this way or that way.’ I’m a practical man myself: I stick close to
the facts; they’re solid; they’re tangible; they’re not to be evaded. I won’t
allow myself to be argued out of a reasonable conviction. I put it like this: if
it was right for you, as you admitted, to leave St Valentin, then, by parity of
reasoning, it’s right for you now to leave Innsbruck instantly. Mill, Whately,
and Jevons would allow that that’s logic. Why did we come here? Partly, no
doubt, to instruct ourselves in the contents of this most interesting town; but
mainly, I submit, to deliver you forthwith from your milkmaid’s clutches.
Why should we go away again? Partly because we’ve seen all that
Innsbruck contains of historical or artistic; but largely, also, because the
milkmaid insists upon pursuing us through the land and jingling her bells
till she compels us to listen to her.”
“She didn’t know we were here,” Will interjected, bristling up.
“She didn’t know we were here, that’s true; but she’s followed us all the
same, cow-bells and pails and all, and we must break away at once from
her. I’ve said so to Rue, and Rue fully agrees with me. As I told you before,
if you mean the girl harm,⁠—⁠well and good; I don’t meddle with you. But if
you mean to go on shilly-shallying like this,⁠—⁠saying goodbye for
ever⁠—⁠and sending her coral necklets; meeting her again at hotels⁠—⁠and
applauding her rapturously; saying goodbye once more⁠—⁠and letting it run,
for aught I know to the contrary, to diamonds and rubies⁠—⁠why, what I say
is this, I’ve seen the same thing tried on more than once before, and my
experience is, the man who begins by meaning only to flirt with a girl, sinks
down, down, down, by gradual degrees, till at last he loses every relic of
self-respect⁠—⁠and ends by marrying her!”
Will fingered his under lip, and knit his brow reflectively. “At least,” he
said, “I must see her and tell her I’m going away again.”
Stern justice once more embodied itself as Florian. “Certainly not,” the
little man answered, with an emphatic shake of the head. “If you say
goodbye, she’ll want to know where you’re going. If she knows where
you’re going, she’ll want, of course, to follow you. If you don’t mean her
harm, then, hang it all, my dear fellow, you must mean her good⁠—⁠which is
far more dangerous. There are only two possible motifs in such an

affair⁠—⁠ou le bon, ou le mauvais. You must mean the first, if you don’t
mean the second. I’ve talked it over with Rue, and Rue entirely supports
me. For the poor girl’s own sake, she says, it’s your duty at once to run
away from the spot, post haste, and leave her.”
A little later in the day, on the slopes behind Mühlan, Will thrashed it
out himself, tête-à-tête with Rue, seated close by her side on the grassy
upland. “She’s in love with you, poor thing,” Rue said very seriously. “You
mayn’t see it yourself; sometimes, you know, Mr Deverill⁠—⁠I can’t always
say Will; it seems so forward⁠—⁠sometimes, you know, you men⁠—⁠even the
best of you⁠—⁠are unkind to us poor women through pure excess of modesty.
You don’t realise how much a girl may really think of you. Your very want
of self-conceit may make you blind to her feelings. But consider what you
must seem to a child like Linnet. You’re a gentleman, a poet, a man of the
great world, wholly removed from her sphere in knowledge, position,
culture. She looks up to you, vaguely and dimly no doubt, with a shrinking
respect, as some one very grand and great and solemn. But your attentions
flatter her. Florian has told me all about how you met her at St Valentin.
Now, even a lady,” and Rue looked down as she spoke, and half stifled a
sigh, “even a lady might be pleased at attracting the notice of such a man as
you; how much more then a peasant-girl! I watched her close last night
when you first came into the room, and I saw such a red flush break over
her throat and cheeks, like a wave surging upwards, as I never saw before
on any woman’s face⁠—⁠though long ago . . . myself . . . when I was very
young . . . I think I may have felt it. And I knew what it meant at once; I
said to myself as I looked, ‘That girl loves Mr Deverill.’ ”
“I think she’s fond of me,” Will admitted modestly. “I didn’t notice it so
much myself, I confess, at St Valentin; but last night, I won’t deny I
watched her hard, and I could see she was really very pleased to meet me.”
Rue looked grave. “Mr Deverill,” she said in a serious voice, “a
woman’s heart is not a thing to trifle with⁠—⁠I’m an old married woman
myself, you see, and I can speak to you plainly. You may think very little
yourself⁠—⁠for I know you’re not conceited⁠—⁠of the effect you’re likely to
produce on women. I’ve known cruel things done, before now, by very
good men, just because they never realised how much store women set on
their passing attentions. You’ve only to look at Linnet to see she has a
deeply passionate nature. Now, I beg of you, don’t play fast and loose with

it any longer. If you don’t mean anything, don’t see her again. The more
you see of her, the worse it will be for her.”
Will listened, and ruminated. Rue’s words had more effect on him by far
than Florian’s. For one thing, she was a woman, and she treated the matter
earnestly, where Florian only treated it with the condescending flippancy of
his native clubland. To Rue, in her true womanliness, an alp-girl’s heart was
still a sacred object; to Florian, ’twas a toy for the superior creature, man, as
he said, “to play skittles with.” But then, again, Florian had dwelt much to
him on the chance of his finally marrying Linnet. To Will himself, that
contingency seemed too remote to contemplate. As he sat by Rue’s side on
the grassy upland, and heard Rue speak so gently to him in her well-turned
sentences, the distance between a refined and educated lady like that and a
musical alp-girl appeared to his mind too profound to be bridged over. Was
it likely, in a world which held such women as Rue, he ever could marry
such a girl as Linnet? Now, Rue herself never spoke of marriage between
Linnet and himself as even possible. She took it for granted the end must be
either Linnet’s ruin or Linnet’s desertion. And all she urged him was not to
break the poor child’s heart for her. So, where Florian’s worldly wisdom fell
somewhat flat on his ears, Rue’s feminine sympathy and tact produced a
deep effect upon him.
“It’ll make her very sad, I’m afraid, if she doesn’t see me again,” he
said, looking down, with masculine shyness.
“I know it will,” Rue answered, pushing her point with advantage. “I
could see that last night. But all the more reason, then, you shouldn’t let it
go any further.”
“Well, but must I never see her again?” Will inquired with an anxious
air. For his own sake, even, that counsel of perfection was a very hard
saying.
Rue’s face grew still graver. “No; I think you must never see her again,”
she answered, seriously. “Remember what it involves. Remember what she
is; how dazzled she must be by a gentleman’s advances. The more you see
of her, the more she’ll think of it⁠—⁠the more she’ll love you, confide in you,
lean on you. That’s only womanly. We all of us do it . . . with a man we
admire and feel greater and better than us. And you and she, after all, are
both of you human. Some day, perhaps, carried away by a moment of
emotion⁠—⁠” She broke off quite suddenly, and let her silence say the rest.
“And then,” she went on, after a long pause, “when all’s lost and all’s done,

you’ll be sorry, poor child, you’ve spoilt and wrecked her whole life for
her. . . .” She paused again, and grew crimson. “Mr Deverill⁠—⁠Will⁠—⁠” she
said, faltering, “I wouldn’t speak to you like this if I didn’t feel I was doing
it to save this poor child in the end from untold misery. It’s not only the
material consequences I’m thinking of now (though those are bad enough),
but the girl’s own heart⁠—⁠for I can see she has got one. If you don’t go
away, sooner or later you’ll break it. What other end can there be to an
affair like this between a poet like you and a Tyrolese peasant girl?”
What other end, indeed! Will knew it, and felt it. He saw she was right.
And her words thrilled through him. When a beautiful woman discusses
your personal affections in such a strain as this it isn’t in human nature (in
its male embodiment) not to tingle through and through in pure instinctive
response with her. While Rue spoke like that, Will felt he must indeed see
no more of Linnet. “But where must I go?” he asked, vaguely, just to
distract the talk from his own potential misdeeds. Their original idea was
Cortina and the Dolomites.
The innocent question fell in pat with Rue’s plans. Already that morning
she had talked it over with Florian; and Florian, for the furtherance of his
own designs, had agreed it would be best for them to alter their route, as
things stood, in favour of a new project which Rue suggested. She was
going to Meran herself, for a month or six weeks of bright autumn weather,
on her way down to Italy. Why shouldn’t they come there, too, she asked,
and keep the family together? Florian, not unmindful of her seven hundred
thousand pounds, admitted at once the cogency of her reasoning. It would
be quite delightful, he said⁠—⁠in point of fact, consummate. But would Will
consent to it? Then Rue expounded to him her views about Will and his
future in life⁠—⁠how he ought to retire to the wilderness for forty days, after
the manner of the prophets, to meditate, and, if possible, to begin some
great work, which should bring in the end name and fame and honour to
him. Florian admitted, just to humour her, that if Will had the chance, and
chose to buckle to, he might really produce something quite worth looking
at. “Persuade him to it,” he said, in his mellifluous tones. “To you, Rue, it
comes so easy, you see, to be persuasive. One word from your lips is worth
fifty from mine. Make him stop away for three months from that dear,
delightful, distracting London, and begin some big thing that the world
must listen to.”

To inspire a great work is a mission in life for a woman⁠—⁠to be some
Petrarch’s Laura, some Dante’s Beatrice. So, when Will asked plaintively,
“Where must I go?” that afternoon, Rue answered with prompt decision,
“Why, of course, to Meran. I’m going there myself. You must come with us
and stop there.”
“What for?” Will inquired, not wholly untouched in soul⁠—⁠for proximity
counts for much, and they were sitting close together⁠—⁠that the pretty
American should so desire his company.
Then Rue began to explain, to persuade, to reason. And reason from
those lips was profoundly conclusive. No syllogism on earth could have
failed to convince from them. Meran was the prettiest place in South Tyrol,
she said; the pleasantest climate for the autumn months, the loveliest
scenery. The sun always shone, and the birds always sang there. Though it
froze underfoot, you could bask on the hill-tops. But that wasn’t all;⁠—⁠and
she leaned forward confidentially⁠—⁠she wanted to speak to him again about
that subject she had broached the other day on the Lanser Kopf. When a
pretty woman interests herself in your private concerns, she’s always
charming; when she pays you the delicate flattery of stimulating you to use
“your own highest powers”⁠—⁠that’s the proper phrase⁠—⁠she’s quite
irresistible. So Will Deverill found Rue. Why, she asked, should he go back
so soon to London? This devotion to mere journalism was penny-wise and
pound-foolish. Could he afford to stay away for six weeks at Meran⁠—⁠just
barely afford it⁠—⁠and settle himself down at a quiet hotel to some really big
work that would make him famous?
Will, drawing a deep breath, and looking wistfully into her eyes,
admitted his funds in hand would permit him, with care, such a hard-
working holiday.
Then Rue pressed him close. She brought ghee to his vanity. She was
convinced if he stopped in this keen mountain air, among these glorious
Alps, fresh inspired from Nature, he could turn out a poem, a play, a
romance, some great thing of its kind, that the world must listen to. He had
it in him, she felt sure, to make his name famous. Nothing venture, nothing
have. If he didn’t believe in himself enough to risk six weeks of his
precious time on the effort to sketch out something really worthy of him,
then all she could say was⁠—⁠and she flooded him as she spoke with the light
of her lustrous eyes⁠—⁠he believed in himself far less⁠—⁠oh, so far, far
less⁠—⁠than his friends believed in him. Florian had told her Will held no

regular staff-appointment on any London paper; he was an occasional
journalist, unattached, earning a precarious livelihood, in fear and
trembling, by reviews and poems and descriptive articles in half-a-dozen
assorted dailies and weeklies. Why shouldn’t he give them up for awhile,
then, and play boldly and manfully for some larger stake, some stake such
as she knew he could well attain to? And she quoted Queen Elizabeth⁠—⁠or
was it Walter Raleigh?⁠—⁠

“He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desert is small,
Who will not put it to the touch
To lose, or win it all.”

Now, this line of argument, as it happened, exactly fell in, for a special
reason of his own, with Will’s mood for the moment. A holiday, we all
know, especially in the pure and stimulating air of the mountains, has
always a most invigorating and enlivening effect upon the jaded intellect.
And Will’s holiday in the Zillerthal had inspired him by degrees with fresh
ideas and scenes for a Tyrolese drama. It was a drama of the hills, with
some poeticised version of Linnet for its heroine⁠—⁠a half-musical sketch, a
little mountain operetta, the songs in which were to be all of his own
composing. Hitherto, he had never taken himself quite seriously as a
composer; but Linnet and Andreas Hausberger had praised the few pieces
he played over for them at St Valentin, and Rue had thought well of the
stray snatches from his notes he had given them, under protest, on the very
untuneful hotel piano. Now the idea occurred to him to write and compose a
little play of his own, while the picture of Linnet was still fresh in his brain;
and this holiday Rue dangled so temptingly before him would just suffice to
get the first scaffolding of his piece together. The filling in he could manage
at his leisure in London. So Rue won her point; but ’twas Linnet who won it
for her.
“Yes; I’ll go to Meran,” he said at last, after a long break in their talk,
“and I’ll settle down to work there, and I won’t even wait to say goodbye to
Linnet.”
Poets are weak, however, where a woman is concerned. In this respect,
it may be allowed, Apollo’s sons closely resemble the rest of the children of
Adam. Will left Innsbruck, indeed, without bidding Linnet goodbye, but he

couldn’t refrain from just dropping her a line before he went, to say he must
leave her. “To meet you once more,” he wrote, “would be only to part again.
I must say farewell, and this time for ever. But, Linnet, it makes my heart
ache to do it!” You see, he was a poet.

CHAPTER XV

A CRITICAL EVENING

Florian and Rue, as it happened, were very ill-informed as to the Tyrolese
minstrel market, otherwise they would certainly never have chosen Meran
as a place of refuge for Will Deverill against the pressing temptations of his
acquaintance with Linnet. They chose it because it was a delightful and
frequented autumn resort; because the climate was charming and the
sunshine unfailing; because the grape-cure was then on in full swing in the
valley; and because everybody else at Innsbruck that moment was going
there. For those very reasons, the wisdom of the serpent might have taught
them to avoid it: ’twas the innocence of the dove that led them to fly right
into it. In point of fact, Meran is crowded in October and November. High
well-born Graf and consumptive plebeian disport themselves all day long
on the leafy promenades, eating grapes as they go, beside the band and the
Kurhaus. It stands to the world of Berlin and Vienna as Cannes and
Mentone to the world of London. That was precisely why Andreas
Hausberger had marked it out long since, as the next southward point on
their way Riviera-wards.
“Are there many hotels there?” Franz Lindner asked dubiously, much
crestfallen at his own comparative failure with the public of Innsbruck. A
little of his jauntiness had been washed for the moment out of Franz
Lindner’s figure; he looked limper in the back and not so stiff in the
neck⁠—⁠nay, even his hat stood cocked on his head at a less aggressive angle.
“There isn’t anything else,” Andreas Hausberger answered in his
Western style. “Meran and Obermais are one enormous gasthaus. If Linnet
does as well as she has done at Innsbruck, it’ll take us take three weeks or a
month, at least, to get right through with them. We took a good bit,
considering all things, the other evening. I think she draws; I noticed old
gentlemen slipped their florins under their palms into the plate
unobtrusively. Besides, in a Kurort, she’ll soon get talked about. People at
one hotel or pension will speak of us at another⁠—⁠‘Seen this Tyrolese troupe
going about in the place? Pretty girl; sings sweetly.’ I take it there can’t be
less than thirty houses in Meran where we could get an audience. That
carries us well on to the end of November. By that time, San Remo and
Bordighera’ll be filling up fast, and from there we can go on to Cannes,
Nice, Mentone.”

So three days later saw them safe at Meran. To Linnet, that journey
from north to south, across the great ridge of the Alps, seemed like
transplantation into an earthly fairyland. She had never seen the luscious
wealth of vineclad lands before; for North and South Tyrol are two different
countries, one cold, bleak, Germanic, the other soft, warm, Italian. Meran
itself appeared to her ardent imagination more beautiful than anything eye
hath seen or mind conceived of. And, indeed, it is beautiful. Whoever
knows it loves it. A brawling little mountain stream, the Passer, rushes
headlong from the glaciers of the Otzthaler Alps through a wild upland
glen, to join in due time the broader stream of the Adige, which threads the
bleak Vintschgau on its precipitous course from the lofty snow-fields of the
Ortler and the Wild-Spitze. Near the point where the two unite, on a long
tongue of land, the little town of Meran nestles close among its vines, under
shelter of the rounded ice-worn Küchelberg. It clings with its ancient walls,
its steeples, its watch-towers, as if glued to the lower slopes of the basking
mountain. Linnet gazed at it, delighted. For here, on the south side of the
Alps, looking down the broad valley to sunny Italy, the vegetation differed
greatly, both in richness and in character, from anything she had ever seen
in her native Zillerthal. Indeed, even Italy itself, parched as it often is with
excessive heat, seldom shows such wild luxuriance of foliage and fruit as
these green and well-watered South Tyrolese valleys. There is a bowery,
flowery lavishness and lushness about it all that defies description. The
vines that trail loose across their trellised archways; the gourds that hang
pendent from their wooden frails; the great yellow pumpkins that lean
temptingly over every terraced wall; the lizards that bask blinking on the
sun-smitten rock-face; the crimson sprays of Virginia creeper that droop in
festoons from the brown verandah wood-work of coquettish châlets,
mingled with the pine-clad slopes and bare snow-sprinkled peaks of the
upper background, make a charming hybrid between Switzerland and
Lombardy. Imagine for yourself an ancient German town, with mouldering
walls and high turrets, like Boppard or Andernach, and crenellated castles
of quaint mediæval architecture, but with arcaded streets and Italian
loggias, plumped down incongruously in the midst of this half-Alpine, half-
southern scenery, and you get a very fair bird’s-eye view indeed, in its way,
of the main traits of Meran.
On the very first morning of her arrival in the town, Linnet took her way
out with Franz Lindner and Philippina along the brawling stream that forms

the centre and rallying point of the gay little watering-place. Meran is all
parade, winter-garden, and band, and they walked through its midst to see
and be seen of the lounging Herrschaft. They were dressed in full costume;
’twas a form of advertisement Andreas greatly believed in. Franz held
himself erect, with his feather still stuck Robbler-wise, and his defiant air,
as he strode through the crowd that lined the promenade⁠—⁠the gayest, most
varied, and most fashionable throng Linnet had ever set eyes on. He and
Philippina stared hard at the world that displayed itself before them.
German Jews from Frankfort, great Viennese bankers, the round-faced,
engaging Bavarian fräuleins, the tall and tailor-made English lawn-tennis
misses. Linnet gazed at them, too, but cast her eyes now and then from the
people and the shops to the great cleft mountain peaks that soared
everywhere high and clear-cut into the sky above them.
In the lower part of their walk the river was smooth, and the roadway
was bordered by fantastic pensions and quaint Tyrolese buildings; but in the
upper part, which they reached beyond a single bold arch of stone-work that
spanned the Passer, precipitous rocks began to hem it in, the river assumed
the guise of a foaming torrent, and the ruined fortress of the Zenoburg, with
its Romanesque portal, frowned down from high above them on a water-
worn gorge where the stream forced its way in a dashing cataract. A little
platform overhangs the very edge of the cascade. Linnet stood there long,
leaning over the iron rail, and gazing with delight at the white foam
beneath, and the placid deep green of the calm rock-basin that received the
mountain stream as it leapt from the precipice.
Franz and Philippina wouldn’t let her remain there, however. With the
restlessness of their kind, they were eager to explore this new world more
fully. They strolled through the town, and up the hills behind, where all
seemed fresh and southern and romantic to Linnet. Through green alleys of
vines, trained like bowers over their heads, they mounted at last by a cloven
ravine to the chestnut-covered slopes, where they looked down like a map
on the vast garden of the Etschthal. It was a wonderful view. Linnet drank it
in eagerly. In front crouched the town with its huddling red roofs wedged in
between the hill and the scurrying river; beyond lay a wide plain of such
luxuriant tilth as Linnet till then had never dreamt of. Villages and churches
clustered thick by the dozen on slope and hill-top; but what added the last
touch of charm to the strange scene in Linnet’s eyes was the extraordinary
number and variety of its feudal châteaux. Every height was crowned by its

castellated Schloss, ivy-clad Planta, huge sun-smitten Labers, the terraced
front of Rametz, the frowning bastions of Fragsburg: Franz Lindner, with
his keen eyes, could count no less than forty-three of them. The exhilaration
of the fresh scene, and of the southern trees and creepers, so different from
the stunted pines of their own chilly Zillerthal, filled Linnet with a certain
vague and indefinable delight: had but her Engländer been there, she would
have been perfectly happy.
Andreas Hausberger had taken charge of the health of his troupe, in
strict accordance with his own favourite theories. The two girls were to
walk on the hills for three hours every morning. They were to dine thus and
thus. They were to do or avoid this, that, or the other thing. He himself had
gone off meanwhile to one of the smaller hotels to make arrangements
beforehand for that evening’s concert. One of the smaller hotels, bien
entendu, for Andreas knew well the money value of mere gossip as a means
of advertisement. Not till he had seen what impression Linnet made on the
public of the lesser houses would he launch her on the Meranhof or the
Erzherzog Johann. That ensured him the full benefit of the talk of the town.
A shrewd man, Andreas Hausberger! By the time he reached those larger
and richer houses in his nightly rounds, he didn’t doubt the world of Meran
would have heard and tattled much of his new-found singer; people would
say to one another, “Don’t miss the Tyrolese troupe that’s coming to us to-
night; they say there’s one girl in it worth seeing and hearing.” For Andreas
was above all things a man of the world; he never threw away the chance of
earning an extra gulden.
That evening, in due course, their concert came off at the Austria at
Obermais. You know the Austria?⁠—⁠a small but select and aristocratic
pension, much affected by the Von So-and-so’s of Berlin and Vienna. The
result (in net cash) surpassed the prudent Andreas’s highest expectations.
Though no Will Deverill was there to inspire her efforts, Linnet sang
divinely. Indeed, to say the truth, though she had met him and lost him once
more at Innsbruck, that meeting and losing, instead of dashing her hopes to
the ground, as Rue and Florian expected, had only produced on her simple
little mind a general impression that now, by the blessed Madonna’s aid, her
Engländer might turn up any day, anywhere. In that innocent hope, born of
the age of faith, she sang her best with a will, and charmed her audience,
looking hard at the door all the while, to see if, peradventure, her Engländer
would enter. And when no Engländer came, she comforted her soul with the

thought that Andreas had said there were twenty-nine other hotels in Meran
and Obermais⁠—⁠at any one of which, no doubt, that dear friend might be
stopping. Her heart wasn’t crushed⁠—⁠not the least bit of it⁠—⁠and her trust in
the blessed Madonna on the Britannia metal pendant that hung round her
neck was as vivid and as childishly unquestioning as ever. Our Dear Frau
had brought her her lover at Innsbruck; Our Dear Frau could bring him her
just as well at Meran here.
She sang three times. Each time the audience applauded vociferously.
The Austria, you see, is mainly frequented by Germans. Now, your German
is musical; he has little reserve; he loves a good noise; and he’s never afraid
of displaying his feelings. Moreover, the little party in the salon that night
was largely composed of Viennese or Bavarians; they understood the zither
and the Tyrolese songs; they were to the manner born, good judges of
execution. Franz Lindner’s feather curled once more, quite as perkily as
ever, when they applauded the bravado of his facile playing. Philippina
smiled and bobbed, a wicked twinkle in her eye, when they cried “Bis!” to
the loudest and sauciest of her jodels. But at each of Linnet’s songs, her
hearers grew silent, then burst as she ceased into uproarious approbation.
She was the heroine of the night, the black swan of the party; not often had
they heard such a voice as hers at so humble a performance.
When all was finished, ’twas Linnet’s task to hand round the plate and
make the little collection. She hated the work, but ’tis always imposed, and
with sound commercial reason, on the prettiest girl of the troupe, so it
naturally devolved upon Linnet to perform it. Even good-humoured
Philippina admitted without dispute her claim to the function. Hot in the
face, and ill at ease, Linnet walked round the room in a maze of confusion,
with her little silver salver. She offered it first to the rich Jew banker from
Frankfort-on-the Main, with the diamond pin, and the seals on his watch-
chain. Now, your pretty face is a mighty opener of your purse-strings. The
rich Jew banker, holding out one fat thumb and forefinger gingerly, after a
second’s hesitation (for ’tis hard to part with so much money at once)
dropped a ten-florin piece in good Austrian gold, plump into the middle of
the silver salver. It fell with a ring. His example was contagious. Christian
Freiherrs could not stand being beaten in their appreciation of vocal art by
Jewish financiers from Frankfort. People who meant to give one florin now
gave two; people who meant to put off on their wives the duty of dispensing
the family bounty now drew out their purses and became their own

almoners. Linnet had never seen a gold piece in her life before; when she
finished her round, bowing low, that night, there were three of them on the
salver.
Andreas Hausberger eyed the plate with a carefully-suppressed smile of
subdued satisfaction. His mouth never moved; only the corners of his eyes
betrayed his emotion. But that evening’s haul had far-reaching
consequences⁠—⁠for him and for Linnet. He saw in a moment he had found
indeed, as he thought, a treasure. He didn’t need the assurances of the rich
Jew banker, and the lady amateur with the tortoise-shell eyeglasses who
came from Berlin, that Linnet should be placed at once for instruction in a
proper conservatorium. He saw for himself, from the effect she produced on
the audience that night, she would yet do wonders. As Linnet left the
Austria, Andreas held her cloak for her. But it wasn’t mere gallantry. “Wrap
your throat round well, Linnet,” he said, with much zealous care. “For
Heaven’s sake don’t take cold. The air on the hills in the daytime won’t hurt
you; but after sitting in these crowded, over-heated rooms, the night fogs
are so bad for you.”
The goose that lays the golden eggs deserves to be well tended.

CHAPTER XVI

SCHLOSS TYROL

“Where shall we go to-day?” Will inquired next morning, as they sipped
their early coffee at the Erzherzog Johann. He was already hard at work on
his projected operetta, but ’twas a fad of his to compose in the open air; he
went out for a long stroll every morning with Florian, and sat on the
hillsides, jotting his thoughts down with a pencil, exactly as they occurred,
face to face with Nature.
“Rue won’t meet us to-day, she says,” his friend answered with a yawn.
“Her nerves are tired after her walk of yesterday. So, for my part, I vote we
go and see Schloss Tyrol. It inspires me, that place,” Florian went on,
warming up⁠—⁠for he had been reading his guide-book. “It has the interest of
a germ, a nucleus, a growing point. I like to think that here we stand before
the embryo of a State⁠—⁠the very heart and core of the evolving Tyrol. We
watch its development, so to speak, from its central cell. It’s the evolution
of law, of order, of authority. The robber chiefs of that high stronghold
perched aloft on the hills”⁠—⁠and Florian extended one small white hand, as
was his wont when he perorated⁠—⁠“are the centre round which clusters by
successive degrees the whole Tyrolese and Austrian history. I see them
pushing their power in concentric rings from their eagle’s eyrie on the crags
above the valley of the Adige, to Botzen and the Brenner, the basin of the
Inn, the Bavarian March, the entire Eastern Alps, from the Engadine to the
Dolomites. Their Schloss there is the original and only genuine Tyrol. By
successful robbery, which is the basis of all the divine rights of
governments, they become the masters and lords of a mighty province; they
dictate peace and justice to obedient villagers; they stand out in course of
time as an earthly providence. But what were they at first? Why, a den of
thieves! There you have the whole evolution of morality in a nutshell⁠—⁠the
rule of the strong, established and maintained by continued aggression. So I
will see Schloss Tyrol; I will be a pilgrim at the shrine; I will refresh myself
at the fount of law and order as it exists and envisages itself for these
innocent mountains.”
“It’s an interesting place,” Will replied, taking no notice of Florian’s
gush, “and it’s well worth visiting. I’ve seen it before. I’ll sit on the rocks
outside and write, while you go in and look at it.”
So after breakfast they started up the narrow old road, paved in places
with cobble-stones, and overarched in its lower slopes by graceful festoons

of trellised vines, that leads from Meran along a shoulder of the hills to the
earliest home of the counts of Tyrol. ’Twas a true South Tyrolese November
morning. It froze hard through the night, and the ice still lay thick on the
pools by the wayside; but in that keen, crisp air, and with that cloudless sky,
the sun overhead blazed as warm as summer. Up the Passer valley to their
right, as they mounted, the villages and churches on the slopes of the Ifinger
stood out in dazzling white against their dark green background. The little
mountain path, bordered as usual by countless petty crucifixes and
whitewashed shrines, wound in continuous zig-zags up the face of the
Küchelberg, a wedge of rounded rock that overlooks the town, draped with
vineyards on its sides, and worn smooth on its summits by the titanic ice
mills of the glacial epoch. The chapels in particular excited Florian’s
interest. “There’s more religion to the square mile in the Tyrol,” he said,
“than in any other country I ever visited!”
They rose by slow degrees till they reached the long hog’s back which
separated the wild Passer glen from the wider and more luxuriant Adige
valley. Florian stood still to gaze. Tier upon tier of vines, in endless
galleries, roofed the southern slope as with one leafy arbour; the long
shoulder itself on whose top they now stood was green with pastures, and
watered by plashing artificial leats which had worn themselves deep beds
like natural streamlets. The music of falling water accompanied them all the
way; the cow-bells tinkled pleasantly from the fields on either hand; and the
views, as they walked along the crest of the ridge, looking down into the
two valleys with their villages and klosters, their castles and towers, seemed
infinite in the variety of their beauty and interest. Above soared the bare
peaks of the Muthspitze and the Tschigatspitze; to the east rose the fissured
summits of the cloven Dolomites; the white mass of the Lanser Ferner
closed the glen to westward.
After nearly an hour’s walk, as they approached the little village of Dorf
Tyrol on the hill-top, they passed a huddled heap of wayside boulders, over
whose ledge the stream that had accompanied them so far on their road
tumbled from a small sluice in a bickering cataract. Two girls were seated
on the brink of the torrent with their backs turned towards them. As the
young men approached, one of the girls looked round, and gave a start of
surprise. “Why, Linnet,” she cried in German, “here he is again!⁠—⁠your
Engländer!”

Linnet turned, with a crimson flush on her nut-brown face, to think that
Philippina should speak so openly of Will, as of some one that belonged to
her. But her cheek, to say the truth, was hardly redder than Will’s own, as he
heard himself so described by the laughing sennerin as Linnet’s Engländer.
He couldn’t conceal from himself, however, the fact that he was glad to
meet Linnet under whatever circumstances. With a wondering heart, he
went up and took her hand. “Why, when did you come here?” he asked, all
astonished.
“The day before yesterday,” Linnet answered, tingling.
“And she sang last night at the Austria,” Philippina put in, with her
good-humoured smile, “and made a great success, too, I can tell you that;
and took, oh, ever and ever so much money. Herr Andreas is so pleased. He
goes chuckling to himself. I think he thinks Linnet will make his fortune.”
“And how long do you stop here?” Will inquired, half-anxiously, half-
eagerly.
“About a month,” Linnet answered, looking deep into his eyes, and
keeping down the rising tears as well as she could in her own. “And you,
Herr Will? how long do you mean to remain here?”
“A month or six weeks,” Will replied with a thrill. Then he added,
gazing hard at her, in spite of Florian, “so I hope we may still have many
chances of meeting?”
Florian flung his fragile form at full length on the heap of stones by
their side, and began to laugh unrestrainedly. “Well, it’s no use fighting
against fate,” he cried, looking up at the blushing pair, with philosophic
indulgence for the errors and foibles of youth and beauty and the poetic
temperament. “You must go your own way, I suppose. I retire from the
contest. I’ve done my very best, dear boy, to preserve you from yourself;
but the stars in their courses seem to fight against Sisera.” He extended both
his small hands with paternal unction. “Bless you, my children,” he cried,
theatrically. “Be happy. Be happy.”
“Which way are you walking?” Will asked in German, to cover his
confusion.
“Well, we were going towards the Schloss,” Philippina replied, smiling.
“But the climb’s rather stiff, so we sat down for awhile by these stones, just
to rest on the hill-top.”
“The finger of fate again!” Florian cried, much amused, raising his
hands deprecatingly. “Well, Will, there’s no help for it; I see they must go

with us. It’s useless trying to keep you and your Oread apart any longer, so I
won’t attempt it. Two’s company, three’s none. The only thing left for a
wise man like me⁠—⁠is just to walk on in front and take a German lesson
from Fräulein Philippina.”
Fortunately for Florian, too, Philippina proved to be one of those gay
and easy-going young ladies with whom the want of a common tongue
wherein to express one’s thoughts forms a very slight barrier to the course
of conversation. Already at her châlet he had guessed as much; and now on
the hill-top, they walked along side by side, chatting and laughing as they
went, with expressive eyes, and making themselves mutually understood as
much by nods and becks and wreathèd smiles⁠—⁠so Florian poetically
phrased it in his silent soul⁠—⁠as by any articulate form of the German
language. Before they had reached the Schloss they stood already on
excellent terms with one another, and Florian even consoled himself for the
enforced loss of Linnet’s society with the reflection that Philippina was,
after all, in many ways “a great deal more practical.”
But Linnet, walking behind, was in the seventh heavens. She had found
her Engländer once more, and that alone would have been enough for her.
But that wasn’t all; this second chance meeting, perfectly natural as it
was⁠—⁠for Andreas had but followed the stream of tourists
southward⁠—⁠impressed her simple mind with the general idea that the
world, after all, wasn’t as big as she had supposed it, and that she’d be
liable now to meet the gnädige Herr wherever she went, quite casually and
accidentally. Not, indeed, that she troubled her head much just then about
the future in any way: with Will by her side, she lived wholly in the present.
She didn’t even ask him why he had gone away from Innsbruck without
coming to say goodbye to her in person; she didn’t utter a single word of
reproach or complaint; she accepted all that; she took it all for granted. Will
never could marry her; she didn’t expect him to marry her: a gentleman like
him couldn’t marry a peasant-girl; a Catholic like herself couldn’t marry a
heretic who scarcely bowed the knee to Our Blessed Lady. But she loved
him for all that, and she was happy if he would but let her walk beside him.
And in this she was purely and simply womanly. True love doesn’t ask any
end beyond itself: it is amply satisfied with being loved and loving.
And Will? Well, Will had a poet’s nature, and the poet lives in the
passing emotion. Only a man of moods can set moods before us. Like
Linnet herself, Will thought little of the future when Linnet was beside him.

He meant her no harm, as he said truly to Florian; but he meant her no good
either: he meant nothing at all but to walk by her side, and hold her hand in
his, and feel his heart beat hard, and her finger-touch thrill through him.
Walking thus as in a mist, they passed Dorf Tyrol; and the road at once
grew wilder and more romantic. It grew also more sequestered, with deeper
bends and nooks, as it turned the corners of little ravines and gulleys, where
they could look at one another more frankly with the eager eyes of young
love; and once, Will raised his hand to Linnet’s nut-brown cheek, and
pressed it tenderly. Linnet said nothing, but the hot blood rushed to her face
with mingled shame and pleasure; and who was so glad as she that Will
Deverill should touch her!
The path wound round a deep gorge, overhanging a torrent, with
Schloss Tyrol itself frowning beyond on its isolated crag⁠—⁠a picturesque
and half-ruinous mediæval fortress, almost isolated on a peninsular mass of
crumbling mud-cliff, interspersed with the ice-worn débris of pre-historic
glaciers. ’Tis a beautiful spot. Pretty Alpine rills, tearing headlong down the
sides, have carved out for themselves steep ravines which all but island the
castle; their banks rise up sheer as straight walls of cliff, displaying on their
faces the grey mud of the moraine, from which the ice-worn boulders
project boldly here and there, or tumble from time to time to encumber the
littered beds of the streams that dislodged them. But what struck Florian
most of all, as he paused and looked, was the curious effect produced where
a single large boulder has resisted the denuding action of the streams and
the rainfall, so as to protect the tapering column of hardened mud beneath
it. Each big rock thus stood paradoxically perched on the summit of a
conical pillar, called locally an earth-pyramid, and forming, Florian thought,
the most singular element in this singular landscape. Close to its end the
track bends round an elbow to skirt the ravine, and then plunges for a
hundred yards or more into a dark and narrow underground passage through
the isthmus of moraine stuff, before drawing up at the portcullis of the
dismantled fortress. A more romantically mysterious way of approaching a
mediæval stronghold Florian could hardly imagine: it reminded him of
Ivanhoe or the Castle of Otranto.
But as Florian and Philippina disappeared under the shadow of the
darkling archway, Will found himself alone for one moment with Linnet,
screened from observation by the thick trellis-work of the vineyards. They
were walking close together, whispering in one another’s ears those eternal

nothings which lovers have whispered in the self-same tones, but in a
hundred tongues, for ten thousand ages. Occasion favoured them. Will
glanced round for a moment; then with a rapid movement he drew the
trembling girl to himself, half unresisted. Her cheek was flushed, partly
with joy, partly with fear, that he should dare to lay hands on her. His
boldness thrilled her through with a delicious thrill⁠—⁠the true womanly joy
in being masterfully handled. “No, no,” she cried in a faint voice; “you
mustn’t, you mustn’t.” But she said it shyly, as one who half-wishes her
words to fail of their effect: and Will never heeded her “no”⁠—⁠and oh, how
glad she was that Will never heeded it! He held her face up to his, and bent
his own down tenderly. Linnet tried to draw back, yet pursed up her lips at
the same time and let him kiss her when he tried; but she made him try first,
though when at last he succeeded, she felt the kiss course trembling through
her inmost being.
It was but a moment, yet that moment to her was worth many eternities.
For a second of time she nestled against him confidingly, for now he was
hers, and she was his for ever. Their lips had sealed it. But before he could
steal another, she had broken away from him again, and stood half-penitent,
half-overjoyed, by the roadside, a little way from him. “No more now!” she
said, gravely, lifting one finger in command; “we must follow Herr
Florian.” And with that, they plunged at once into the gloom of the tunnel.
What happened by the way, no one knows save themselves; but, two
minutes later, with blushing cheeks, they rejoined their companions by the
gateway of the castle. Even flushed as she was, Linnet couldn’t help
admiring it. It was beautiful, wonderful. The ancient wealth and dignity of
the first counts of Schloss Tyrol remain well reflected to this day in the rude
magnificence of their Romanesque residence. Linnet looked up with
wonder at the round-arched portal of the principal doorway, richly carved
with quaint squat figures of grotesque fancy, naïve, not to say childish and
uncouth, in design, but admirable and exquisite in execution. “Tenth-
century workmanship!” Florian said, with a bland smile, as he looked up at
it, condescendingly; and Will, pulling himself together again, explained to
the two girls in detail the various meanings of the queer little figures. Here
were Adam and Eve; here Jonah and the whale; here saints revelled in
Heaven; here, lost souls rolled in torment. Linnet gazed, and admired the
beauty of the door⁠—⁠but still more, Will’s learning. If only she could

understand such things as that! But there!⁠—⁠he was so wise, and she so
ignorant!
They passed into the hall⁠—⁠that stately old Rittersaal, adorned with
marble carvings of the same infantile type⁠—⁠and looked sheer down from
the windows a thousand feet on to the valley below, with the falls of the
Adige behind, and a sea of tumultuous porphyritic mountains surging and
rolling in the farther background. ’Twas a beautiful view in itself, rendered
more beautiful still by its picturesque setting of semi-circular arches,
divided and supported by slender shafts of polished alabaster. To an
untutored girl of Linnet’s native artistic temperament, it was delightful to
pass through those lordly halls and into that exquisite chapel with its quaint
old frescoes, in company with somebody who could explain their whole
meaning to her simple intelligence so well as Will Deverill. Though she felt
her own ignorance⁠—⁠felt it acutely, sensitively⁠—⁠she felt at the same time
how fast she could learn from such a teacher; and as she dropped on her
knees before the twelfth-century Madonna in the spangled shrine of that
antiquated chantry, it was not for herself alone that she murmured below her
breath, in very tremulous tones, an Ave Maria.
Will and Florian talked, too, of the Schloss and its history. Linnet
listened with all her ears, though she hardly understood half the English
words they used to describe it⁠—⁠how it commanded the whole vast plain of
Meran and Botzen, the widest and most populous in the Eastern Alps, one
basking garden of vines and Indian corn and fruit-trees, thickly dotted with
hamlets, churches, and castles. “You can see why the counts who lived here
spread their power and their name by slow degrees over the whole of this
country,” Will said, as they gazed down on it. And then he went on to talk
of how the Counts of Tyrol gradually absorbed Meran and Botzen, and in
course of time, by their possession of the Brenner route, the great mediæval
highway from Italy to Germany, acquired the over-lordship of the whole
wide tract which is now called after them. Oh, what grand words he used!
Linnet listened, and wondered at them. She caught, from time to time, the
name of Margaret Maultasch⁠—⁠that Meg of the Pocket-Mouth who made
over her dominions to the house of Austria⁠—⁠and learned from stray hints
how the Counts of the new line moved their capital northward from Meran
to Innsbruck. It was marvellous how Herr Will, who was a stranger from
England, should know so much more about her people’s history than she
herself did! But there! what did she say? Herr Will knew everything.

Florian and Philippina went off by themselves after awhile among the
ruins of the ramparts. Linnet was left alone with Will again by the windows
of the Rittersaal. All this historical talk had inflamed her eager mind with
vague hopes and possibilities. Why should not she too know? Why should
not she too be fit for him, like the fair-haired lady? “Herr Will,” she said at
last, turning round to him with a shy look in her shrinking eyes, “How I
wish you could teach me! How I wish you could tell me how to learn such
things! We shall be here for a month. Why shouldn’t I begin? Why
shouldn’t I learn now? We may see each other often.”
“Will you be on the hill behind the town to-morrow?” Will asked, half-
ashamed of himself for these endless breakings-off, and these fresh re-
commencements.
“Perhaps,” Linnet answered timidly, in her accustomed phrase; “if
Philippina will come . . . and if she doesn’t tell Andreas.”
“Where will you be?” Will inquired, taking her hand in his own once
more and holding it.
Linnet looked down and paused. “I might be near the cross at the turn of
the road by the second oratory, about ten o’clock,” she said very low, “if
Our Lady permits me.”
Will pressed her hand hard. “And where do you sing to-night?” he
asked, with a little smile of pleasure. “I must come and hear you.”
To his immense surprise Linnet drew back at once, red as a rose, and
fixed her eyes on him pleadingly. “Oh, no, don’t,” she cried, much
distressed. “Don’t, don’t, I beg of you.”
Will, in turn, lifted his head, astonished, and looked hard at her. He
couldn’t understand this strange freak of feeling. “Then don’t you like me
to hear you?” he cried, regretfully. “It’s such a pleasure to me. I thought you
wanted me to hear. And I thought I encouraged you.”
“So you do,” Linnet answered with a burst, half-sidling towards him,
half-shrinking. “I love you to hear me. And I’ll sing for you whenever you
like. I’ll sing for you till I’m hoarse. But don’t come to the hotels. Oh, don’t
come, I implore you!”
“Why not, my child?” Will cried, drawing her close to him once more.
Linnet’s cheeks burnt crimson. She looked down and stammered. Then,
with a sudden impulse she hid her face on his bosom, and yielded up her
whole soul to him. “Because,” she whispered, all aglow with maiden shame
at having confessed the truth, “if Andreas Hausberger sees you, he’ll know

you’re in Meran⁠—⁠and then he won’t allow me to come out on the hills to
meet you.”

CHAPTER XVII

CAUGHT OUT

That avowal of Linnet’s that she didn’t want Andreas Hausberger to know
of Will’s presence in the town put Will’s relations towards her during the
next few weeks on a different, and to some extent compromising, footing. It
introduced into their meetings a certain shadowy element of clandestine
love-making which was in many ways distasteful to Will’s frank and manly
nature, though it was at the same time, as Florian felt, a hundred times more
“dangerous” for him than any open acquaintance. For Andreas, after all,
was Linnet’s ostensible guardian and nearest male protector. To meet Linnet
on the hills, without his knowledge or consent, was to place oneself in the
position of an unrecognised lover. Will knew it was a mistake. And yet⁠—⁠he
did it. We, who have made no mistakes of any sort in all our lives, but have
steadily followed the beaten track all through, with sheep-like persistence,
can afford to disapprove of him.
So, day after day, during the next few weeks, Will went up on the hills
to walk and talk with Linnet. Rue Palmer was delighted. She thought, poor
soul, her scheme was succeeding admirably. Will was out every morning on
the mountains alone, working hard at his magnum opus, which was to
astonish the world, and with which she had inspired him. It was glorious,
glorious! And, indeed, in spite of the time wasted in talking with Linnet,
though the best spent time, as everybody knows, is the time we waste, Will
did really succeed in writing and composing at odd moments and in the
night watches no small part of his graceful and beautiful little operetta,
“The Chamois Hunter’s Daughter.” But alas for poor Rue, it was not she
who inspired it.
On these morning expeditions up the surrounding hills to some
appointed trysting-place, Florian sometimes accompanied him, and
sometimes not. But, in any case, he abstained from mentioning their object
to Rue; as he put it himself, never should it be said that Florian Wood could
split upon two ill-advised but confiding young people. It suited Florian’s
book now, indeed, that Will’s attention should be distracted from Rue to
Linnet. He wanted to make the running for himself with the American
heiress, and he was by no means sorry that so dangerous and important a
rival as the author of “Voices from the Hills” should be otherwise occupied.
So he kept his own counsel about Will and Linnet; he had abdicated by this
time his self-appointed function of moral censor; and seeing they would go

to the devil in any case, he was inclined to let them go their own headlong
way, into the jaws of matrimony, without preliminary haggling. He that will
to Cupar, maun to Cupar. Deverill would marry his cow-girl in the end⁠—⁠of
that Florian felt certain; and when a man’s quite determined to make a fool
of himself, you know, why, you only earn his dislike, instead of his esteem,
by endeavouring to win him back again to the ways of wisdom.
And Will? Well, Will himself had as yet no very fixed ideas of his own
as to whither he was tending. Being only a poet, he was content to drift with
the wind and tide, and watch on what shoals or shores they might finally
cast him. Most probably, if things had been allowed to go their own way, he
would sooner or later have justified Florian’s pessimistic prophecies by
marrying Linnet. He would have gone on and on, falling more and more
deeply in love with the pretty peasant every day, and letting her fall every
day more and more deeply in love with him, till at last conventional
differences sank to nothing in his eyes, and he remembered only that heart
answereth to heart, be it poet’s or alp-girl’s. At present, however, he
troubled himself little with any of these things. He was satisfied for the
moment, Florian said, to bask in the sunshine of that basilisk’s smile,
without care for the morrow. Sooner or later, he felt sure, in so small a
town, either Florian or he must run up unawares against Andreas
Hausberger. Whenever that happened, no doubt, there must be some sort of
change or new departure. Meanwhile, he religiously avoided the
Promenade, where he was likeliest to come suddenly on the wise
impresario. So he stuck to the hills, with or without Linnet.
The very next morning, indeed, after this their chance meeting, he went
up the Küchelberg once more, impressed with an ardent desire to aid and
abet Linnet’s laudable wish for self-education. He brought a book up with
him to read to the two girls under the bright blue sky, as they sat on the
hillside. He chose a pleasant spot, in the full eye of the autumn sun, on a
rounded boss of rock, whose crumbling clefts were still starred with wild
pinks and rich yellow tormentils. Florian had contributed to the feast of
reason and the flow of soul a kilogram of grapes⁠—⁠they cost but threepence-
halfpenny a pound in the vintage season⁠—⁠unknown luxuries till then to
Philippina and Linnet. Philippina found the grapes delicious, but the book
rather dry; its style was stilted, and it appeared to narrate the story of a
certain Doctor Faust, his transactions with a gentleman of most doubtful
shape (who caused Philippina to look round in some fear), and his wicked

designs against the moral happiness of a young girl called Gretchen.
Philippina yawned; it was a tedious performance. Florian, having reduced
his share of the grapes to their skins alone, yawned in concert with the lady,
and began to play with his eyeglass. As his German didn’t suffice to
understand the lines, even when aided by Will’s dramatic delivery and clear
enunciation, he found the play slow, and the reader a nuisance. So he was
very well pleased when Philippina suggested, at a break in the first act, they
should go off for a walk by themselves alone, and continue their course of
oral instruction in the German language. Florian liked Philippina; there was
no silly nonsense about her. After all, in a woman, if all you want is a walk
on the Küchelberg, the total absence of silly nonsense, you must at once
admit, is a great recommendation.
But Linnet sat on. She sat on, and listened. She drank it in, open-eyed,
and with parted lips⁠—⁠every line and every word of it. Dear Herr Will read
so well, and made her feel and understand every point so dramatically; and
the book⁠—⁠the book itself was so profoundly interesting. Never in her life
before had Linnet heard anything the least bit like it. It was grand, it was
beautiful! She didn’t know till then the world contained such books; her
reading had been confined to her alphabet and grammar at the parish folk-
school, supplemented by the good little tracts on purgatory and the holy
saints, distributed by the Herr Vicar and the sisters at the nunnery.
Theological literature was the sole form yet known to her. This weird tale
about Gretchen and the transformed philosopher opened out to her new
vistas of a world of possibilities. Long after, when she sang in great opera-
houses, as Marguerite in Gounod’s “Faust,” she remembered with a thrill
how she had first heard that tale, in Goethe’s deathless words, from Will
Deverill’s lips, on the green slopes of the Küchelberg.
She sat there for an hour or two, never heeding the time, but listening,
all entranced, to that beautiful story. Now and again Will broke off, and held
her hand for a moment, and gazed deep into her eyes, and said some sweet
words of his own to her. He was a poet, Herr Will, in his own tongue and
land; she knew now what that meant⁠—⁠he could make up such lovely things
as he read from the book to her. “Tell me some of your own, Herr Will. Tell
me some of your own verses,” she said, sighing, at last. “I should love to
hear them.”
But Will shook his head. “The English is too hard. You wouldn’t
understand them, Linnet,” he answered.

“Let me try,” Linnet pleaded, with such a winning look that Will
couldn’t resist her. And to humour her whim, he repeated the simplest of the
laughing little love-songs from his book of “Voices.”
The ring of it was pretty⁠—⁠very sweet and musical. Linnet half
understood⁠—⁠no more; for the words were too hard for her. But it spurred
her on to further effort. “You must lend me some books like that in
English,” she said, simply. “I want to be wise, like you and Herr Florian.”
So Will brought her next day from the book-shop in the town the dainty
little “Poetry Book of Modern Poets,” in the Tauchnitz edition. He wrote
her name in it too; and Linnet took it home, and hid it deep in her box in a
white silk handkerchief, and read bits of it by night, very stealthily in her
own room, spelling out what it meant with Andreas Hausberger’s
dictionary. Long after, she had that precious volume bound in white
Florentine vellum, with a crimson fleur-de-lys on the cover, at a house just
opposite the Duomo at Florence. But at present she read it in its paper
covers. She read other books, too⁠—⁠German books which Will chose for
her; not instructive books which were over her head, but poetry and
romance and imaginative literature, such as her ardent Tyrolese nature
could easily assimilate. Day after day, Will read her aloud something
fresh⁠—⁠Undine, the Maid of Orleans, Uhland’s Ballads, Paul Heyse’s short
stories⁠—⁠but of all the things he read to her, the one she liked best was a
German translation of an English play⁠—⁠a beautiful play by another English
poet, whose name was also Will, but who died long ago⁠—⁠a play about two
luckless and devoted lovers, called Romeo and Juliet. Linnet cried over that
sad story, and Will kissed her tears away; and a little later, when Andreas
Hausberger took her to Verona on their way south to Milan, Linnet went of
her own accord to see Juliet’s tomb in a courtyard in the town, and wasted
much excellent sympathy and sentiment over the shameless imposture of
that bare Roman sarcophagus. But she meant very well; and she believed in
Juliet even more firmly than she believed in Siegfried and Chriemhild and
all the other fine folks to whom Will introduced her.
So three weeks passed away, three glorious golden weeks, and day after
day, on those lovely hillsides, Linnet saw her lover. At the end of a
fortnight, Rue heard, from various friends at other hotels, of a wonderful
singer in a Tyrolese troupe, then performing nightly in the various salons.
“Why, that must surely be Linnet!” she said before Will, to the first friend
who mentioned it.

“Yes; Linnet⁠—⁠that’s her name,” Rue’s friend assented.
“I knew she was in the town,” Will admitted somewhat sheepishly; for
he felt as if he were somehow deceiving Rue, though it never would have
entered his good, modest head to suppose she herself could care anything
about him, except as a poet in whose work she was kind enough to take a
friendly interest.
“Ah, I should love to hear her again!” Rue cried, enthusiastically. “She
sings like a nightingale⁠—⁠such a splendid soprano! Let’s find out where
she’ll be to-night, and go round in a body to the hotel to hear her!”
But Will demurred strongly. He’d rather not go, he said; he’d stop at
home by himself and get on with his operetta. At that, Rue was secretly
pleased in her own heart; she felt it throb sensibly. After all, then, her poet
didn’t really and truly care for the pretty alp-girl. He knew she was in the
town⁠—⁠and, in spite of that knowledge, had spent every evening all the time
with herself at the Erzherzog Johann! Nor would Florian go either; he
invented some excuse to account for his reluctance. So Rue went with two
new girls she had picked up at the hotel, in succession to the giggling
inarticulates at Innsbruck. Linnet recognised her in the crowd, for the room
was crowded⁠—⁠’twas a nightly ovation now, wherever Linnet sang⁠—⁠and
knew her at once as the fair-haired lady. But Florian and Will weren’t with
her to-night! That made Linnet’s heart glad. She had come without him!
After all, her Engländer didn’t always dance attendance, it seemed, on the
fair-haired Frau with the many diamonds!
So easily had Will made two women’s hearts happy, by stopping at
home at his hotel that evening! For women think much more of men than
men imagine⁠—⁠their poor little breasts live for the most part in a perpetual
flutter of love and expectancy.
As the weeks wore away, however, it began to strike Franz Lindner as a
singular fact, that Philippina and Linnet severed themselves so much every
day from the rest of the troupe, and went up on the hills all alone for
exercise. That fierce young Robbler was a true Tyrolese in his treatment of
his women. Though he never abated one jot or tittle of his attentions to
Linnet, it hardly occurred to him as forming any part of a lover’s duty to
accompany his mädchen in her morning rambles. Franz was too much
engaged himself, indeed, with the young men of the place in the cafés and
beer-gardens, to find much time hanging idle on his hands for female
society. He had made many friends in the gay little town. His hat and his

feather were well known by this time to half the gilded youth in the Meran
restaurants. Andreas Hausberger had turned out the young women on the
hills; and there they might stop, so far as Franz Lindner was concerned to
prevent them. Andreas Hausberger had been wondrous careful of Linnet’s
health of late, since he saw he was likely to make pots of money from her.
He had bound them all down by a three years’ engagement, and he knew
now that Linnet was worth at least five times the sum he had bargained to
pay her. But Franz Lindner’s health might take care of itself; and Franz
didn’t think much, personally, of the air of the mountains. He’d had enough
of all that in his jäger days; now the chrysalis had burst, and let loose the
butterfly; his wander-years had come, and he meant to sip the sweets of
advanced civilisation. And he sipped them in the second-rate bars and
billiard-rooms of a small town in South Tyrol.
On this particular morning, however, it occurred to his Robblership to
inquire in his own mind why the womenkind loved to walk so much by
themselves on the mountains. Philippina hadn’t told him, to be sure;
Philippina had an eye to Andreas Hausberger herself⁠—⁠was he not the wirth,
and the master of the troupe?⁠—⁠and she was therefore by no means averse to
any little device which might distract poor Linnet from that most desirable
admirer. Still, Franz had his suspicions. Women are so deep, a man can
never fathom them! He mounted the Küchelberg by the zig-zag path, and
turning to the left by the third Madonna, came at last to a little knoll of bare
porphyry rock, looking down on the wide vale and the long falls of the
Adige.
A very small and dainty, not to say effeminate, young man, in a
knickerbocker suit of most Britannic aspect, was strolling some distance
off, with his arm encircling a woman’s plump waist, which suspiciously
reminded Franz of his friend Philippina’s. The Robbler could hardly believe
his eyes; could that be Herr Florian? Oh no; for they had left the foreign
Herrschaft at the hotel at Innsbruck. But here, close by, behind the shadow
of some junipers⁠—⁠stranger sight still!⁠—⁠stretched at length on the ground,
and reading aloud in German to some unseen person, lay another young
man in another tourist suit, with a voice that most strikingly and exactly
recalled the other Engländer’s at St Valentin. Franz drew a deep breath, and
strode a long step forward. At sound of his foot, the unseen person sprang
back where she sat with a quick, small scream. Black as night in his wrath,

Franz peered round and faced them. It was undoubtedly Will; quite as
undoubtedly Linnet!
The Robbler spoke angrily. “You again!” he cried, clenching his fist,
and knitting his brow hard, with bullet head held forward. “Are you
following us in hiding? What do you mean by this trick? You daren’t show
your face, coward, at our inn in the town! You steal up here and skulk!
What do you mean with the mädchen?”
At that imputation of secrecy, and still worse of cowardice, Will sprang
up and confronted him. “I dare show my face anywhere you like,” he
answered in hot blood. “I have not followed this lady; I came here before
her, and met her at Meran by the purest accident. But I refuse to be
questioned about her by you or by anyone. What right have you to ask? She
is no mädchen of yours. Who gave you any power or authority over her?”
For a moment the Robbler instinct rose fierce and hot in Franz
Lindner’s breast. He drew back half a pace, as if making ready to spring at
him. In a few angry words he repeated his cutting taunts, and spoke
savagely to Linnet. “Go home, go home, girl; you are here for no good!
What can this Engländer want, save one thing, with a sennerin?”
He laid his hand roughly on Linnet’s shoulder. Will couldn’t stand that
sight; he clutched the man’s arm fiercely, twisted it round in the socket, and
pushed him back like a child, in the white heat of his anger. Franz saw the
interloper was strong⁠—⁠far stronger than he supposed. “If you dare to lay
your hand on this lady again,” Will cried, standing in front of her like a
living buckler, “I give you due warning, you do it at your peril. Your life is
at stake. I won’t permit you to behave with brutality before me.”
In his native valley the Robbler would have flown at Will’s throat on
those words, and fought him, strong as he was, to the death, for his
mädchen. But since he came to Meran he had learned some new ways: such
were not, he now knew, the manners of civilisation. Will’s resolute attitude
even produced a calming effect upon the young barbarian. He felt in his
heart he had a better plan than that. To beat Will in fair fight would, after
all, be useless; the mädchen wouldn’t abide, as mädchen ought, by the
wager of battle. But he could wound him far worse. He could go down to
the town⁠—⁠and tell Andreas Hausberger how his ward spent her mornings
on the slopes of the Küchelberg!
Already he was learning the ways of the world. With a sarcastic smile,
he raised his hat ceremoniously, turned feather and all, in mock politeness.

“Good morning, mein Herr,” he drawled out, with a fine north German
accent, picked up in the billiard-rooms. “Good morning, sennerin.” And
without another word he strode away down the mountain.
But as soon as he was gone Linnet burst into tears. “Ah, I know what
he’ll do!” she cried, sobbing and trembling. “He’ll go down to the town and
tell Andreas Hausberger. He’ll go down to the town and tell how he met us
here. And, of course, after this, Andreas will put the very worst face upon
it.”

CHAPTER XVIII

TAKEN BY SURPRISE
Andreas Hausberger was a wise and prudent man. He felt convinced by this
time that Linnet, as he said to himself⁠—⁠though to no one else, for to
confess it would have been foolish⁠—⁠was a perfect gold mine, if only a man
knew how to work her properly. And in exploiting this mine, like a sensible
capitalist that he was, he determined to spare neither time nor pains nor
money. Night after night, as the audiences at the hotels grew more and more
enthusiastic, the truth forced itself upon his wise and prudent mind that
what they said was right: Linnet was a singer fit for the highest
undertakings. She must be trained and instructed for the operatic stage; and
on the operatic stage, with that voice and that presence, she’d be worth her
weight in gold if she was worth a penny.
So, ever since the first day when he left the Zillerthal, Andreas’s views
and ideas about his troupe and his tour had been undergoing a considerable
and constant modification. It would cost a good deal, of course, to abandon
his first plan, and instead of proceeding to the Riviera as he originally
intended, take Linnet to be trained at Milan and Florence. But it was worth
the money. You must throw a sprat to catch a herring. And it must be Italy,
too, not Munich or Dresden. He wouldn’t put her precious life in jeopardy,
now, in those cold northern towns, during the winter months, for he had
grown wonderfully careful of Linnet’s health since he saw how her voice
conjured florins into the plate for him; and though he believed as much as
ever in the virtues of fresh air and a Spartan diet, he feared to expose the
throat that uttered such golden notes to the rigours and changes of a
Bavarian or Saxon December. So Milan and Florence it must be, though he
had Franz Lindner and Philippina and the others on his hands to pay and
care for. And in those great settled towns, where theatres and amusements
were regularly organised, he couldn’t hope his little troupe, deprived of its
chief ornament, could compete, save at a loss, with more showy
establishments. Still, to one thing he had made up his mind: Linnet should
never utter another note in public, after they moved from Meran, until she
could blaze forth, a full-fledged star, armed and equipped at every point
with all that art could do for her, on the operatic stage of London, Paris, or
Petersburg. He must put up with present loss for the sake of future gain; he
must pay for his little troupe and for Linnet’s training, though he spent by
the way his bottom dollar.

Not that the wise impresario was moved in this affair by any mere
philanthropic desire to benefit a favourite pupil. As a prior condition to any
expenditure on fitting and preparing Linnet for the operatic stage, Andreas
proposed to obtain a clear hold on her future earnings by the simple little
business preliminary of marrying her. And he proposed this plan to himself
in the same simple-hearted and entirely dictatorial way in which he would
have proposed some arrangement about his cows or his horses. That Linnet
could possibly object to his designs for her advancement in life was an idea
that hardly so much as even occurred to him. He was her master, and, if he
ordered her, she could scarcely say him nay. That would be plain
contumacy. Besides, the match would be one so much to her own
advantage! Not a girl in St Valentin but would be overjoyed to catch him.
Philippina, he knew, would give her eyes for such a chance; but Philippina’s
high notes were shrill⁠—⁠a great deal too shrill⁠—⁠while Linnet’s were the
purest and clearest and most silvery ever uttered by woman. He was a
husband any girl might well be proud of, and though Linnet would be worth
money, too, if properly trained, yet without his capital to back her up and
give her that needful training, she could never use her voice to full
(mercantile) advantage. She’d be a fool, indeed, if she refused his offer. And
if she did,⁠—⁠well, she was bound to him for three years at any rate; he could
use up her voice pretty well in those three years, as he used up his
horses⁠—⁠on commercial principles⁠—⁠and make a very fair profit out of her
meanwhile in the process.
Thinking which things to himself during his stay in Meran, Andreas,
who was by nature a taciturn person, had been in no hurry to communicate
his ideas on the point prematurely to Linnet. He didn’t want to puff her up
with too much vanity beforehand, by disclosing to her over-soon the high
honour in store for her. She had received more than enough homage already
from the audiences at their concerts; it would turn her head outright if she
knew all at once she was also to be promoted to marry her master. He
would make all the legal preparations for the wedding in due time, without
consulting Linnet; then, when everything was finished, and the day had
come for them to leave Meran, he would break to her all at once the good
fortune he designed for her. Not only was she to marry a man of substance,
and a man of weight, and a Land-amt of the parish, but she was to be
trained and fitted by him with sedulous care as a special star of the operatic
profession.

When Franz Lindner burst in upon him, however, at his old-fashioned
inn, in the street that is called Unter den Lauben, all indignant with the
news how he had lighted upon Linnet and the Herr Engländer together on
the slopes of the Küchelberg, and how he believed they had been meeting
there secretly for many mornings at a stretch, Andreas saw at once this was
no laughing matter. It was serious rivalry. For Franz Lindner himself, as a
possible suitor of Linnet’s, he didn’t care a button. He could afford to
despise the self-assertive Robbler. But Will Deverill⁠—⁠ah, that was quite
another matter! Will Deverill was dangerous; he saw so much at a glance;
and all the more dangerous in that he made his advances to the girl
clandestinely. Poaching on those preserves must be severely repressed.
Andreas didn’t for a moment suppose the Engländer intended or wanted to
marry the child; that was hardly likely: but he might upset her feelings, and,
lead her into trouble, and unsettle her heart, and what was worse still, stuff
her head all full of silly romantic nonsense.
Still, being always a prudent man, Andreas said little at the time. He
was content with assuring Franz, in a very confident tone, that he’d put a
stop at once to this folly of Linnet’s. He acquiesced for the present⁠—⁠it
being his nature to temporise⁠—⁠in Franz’s little pretension to treat the girl as
his acknowledged mädchen. He acquiesced, and smiled,⁠—⁠though he hadn’t
the slightest intention of relinquishing his own hold on a future prima
donna. Meanwhile, he pushed on all the legal formalities for marrying
Linnet himself, as soon as he thought it well to disclose his matured plans to
her.
So when Will went up to their stated meeting-place on the slopes of the
Küchelberg, the morning after that stormy interview at the knoll with Franz
Lindner, hardly daring to expect Linnet would be there to receive him, he
was astonished to find her awaiting him much as usual at the accustomed
seat, undeterred by either the wirth or the redoubtable Robbler. “I can’t
understand it myself,” she said, holding his hand, and half crying. “It’s
awfully curious. I thought he’d be angry with me, and scold me so hard, and
perhaps shut me up in the house for a week, or, at any rate, not let me come
out any more to meet you. But, instead of that, he never said a word; he
hasn’t even spoken to me at all about the matter. Perhaps Franz hasn’t told
him yet; but I think he must have⁠—⁠and so does Philippina. It almost seems
as if he didn’t mind my coming out at all. We can only wait and see. That’s
all I can make of it.”

Thus, for the next few days, Linnet and Will lived on in a real fool’s
paradise. Andreas never said a word about the meetings on the hill; Franz
Lindner looked wise, and bided his time in silence. At the end of the week,
however, Will found himself reluctantly compelled to fulfil a long-standing
engagement with Rue and Florian, entered into before Linnet’s arrival at
Meran, to go for a three days’ tour among the Botzen Dolomites. Will had
put it off and put it off, not to miss one morning of Linnet’s time in the
town, till Rue declared in her imperious little American way she wouldn’t
wait a single day longer for anyone. And, indeed, it was getting full late in
the season, even south of the Alps, for a mountain excursion. Rue had
ordered her carriage, and settled her day to start. Will must go or stop
behind, she said; and to do the last would be to confess all to Rue; so with a
pang at his heart and no small misgivings in his brain⁠—⁠for Linnet by this
time had grown wonderfully dear to him⁠—⁠he made up his mind to absent
himself for three days, and to miss three precious mornings on the hills with
his lady-love. It would freshen up the operetta, Rue declared, with deep
conviction; there’s nothing like change of scene to inspire one with the
germs of poetry and music. But Will, for his part, knew something
better⁠—⁠and he got it every day on the slopes of the Küchelberg.
“You won’t go away while I’m gone?” he asked eagerly of Linnet, on
the day before he left for those hateful Dolomites. “You’re sure Andreas
means to stop longer in the town. You’ll be here when I come back again?”
“Oh yes; quite certain,” Linnet answered, confidently. “He’s not going
away yet. We’ve engagements at hotels for nearly another fortnight.”
Will held her hand long. It was only for three days, yet he found it hard
to part from her. “One last kiss!” he said, drawing her close to him behind
the sheltering gourd-vines. And Linnet let him take it without struggling for
it now. In after years, Will felt those words were a kind of omen. It was far
more of a last kiss than ever he dreamed at the time. And Linnet⁠—⁠well,
Linnet was glad in her heart, when she came to look back on it, she had
allowed him to take that last kiss so easily.
Next morning Will left. Andreas knew he had gone. Not many things
escaped the wise Andreas’s notice. From the moment he first heard of Will’s
meetings with Linnet on the hill behind the town, that cool-headed wirth
had been waiting for his chance; and now the chance had come of its own
accord to him. That day, after dinner, he went into the parlour of their little
inn, and called Linnet to speak to him. Linnet came, all trembling. In a few

short sentences⁠—⁠concise, curt, business-like⁠—⁠Andreas unfolded to his
tremulous ward the notable scheme he had devised for her advancement. He
would make her his wife. But that wasn’t all; he would make her a great
lady⁠—⁠a star of the first magnitude. If she did as he bid, crowds would hang
on her lips; silver and gold would be hers; she should dress in silk robes,
diamonds dangling at her ears, pearls in strings on her bosom. But he said
never a word about her heretic lover. Still, he said never a word about
himself any more. He never mentioned love⁠—⁠her heart, her feelings. He
laid before her, like a man of the world as he was, a simple proposal for an
arrangement between them⁠—⁠in much the same spirit as he might have laid
before Franz Lindner an agreement for a partnership. And he took it for
granted Linnet would instantly jump at him. Why shouldn’t she, indeed?
She had every reason. Not a girl in St Valentin but would be proud if she
could get him.
Yet he wasn’t the least surprised when Linnet, growing pale, and with
quivering lips, hid her face in her hands at last and began to cry bitterly.
These girls are so silly!
“You agree to it?” Andreas asked, laying his palm on her neck behind
with what tenderness he could muster.
Linnet shook it away angrily. “Never, never!” she cried, “never!”
Andreas bore with her patiently. He knew the ways of women. They
were all little idiots! And this Engländer on the hill had filled her poor head
with sentimental rubbish. With infinite forbearance, like a business man, he
began to explain, to expostulate, to admonish her. He pointed out to her
how rare a chance in life it was for a girl in her position to get an offer of
marriage from a man in his; how his capital would enable her to train
herself for the stage; how, without it, she must remain for ever just what she
was now; how, with it, she might rise to the very crown and head of an
admired profession. And, besides, she was bound to him for three years in
any case. In those three years, of course, he could do as he liked with her.
But Linnet, weeping passionately, with her face in her hands, and every
nerve in her body quivering with emotion, only sobbed out now and again
in a heart-broken voice, “No; never, never!”
At last, after one such convulsive outburst, even fiercer than before,
Andreas put the question point blank, “Is it because of this Engländer?”
And Linnet, raising her head, and clasping her hands in despair, made
answer, obliquely, in one wild burst of speech, “Oh, I love him, I love him!”

At those words, Andreas smiled a peculiar cold smile, and began once
more. He kept his head cool; he explained, he reasoned. The Engländer, of
course, never meant to marry her. Marriage in such a case was out of the
question. She must know what that meant; why go off on such side-issues?
. . . . And, besides, she must never forget⁠—⁠the man was a heretic!
Still, Linnet, unflinching, looked up and clasped her hands. “I don’t care
for that,” she cried wildly. “I love him! I love him!”
“Then you refuse, point blank?” Andreas asked, stepping a little aside,
and holding the knob of the bedroom door in his hand, half-irresolute.
“I utterly refuse!” Linnet answered, very firm, but sobbing.
With an air of cruel triumph, Andreas opened wide the door. “Come in,
Herr Vicar!” he cried, with real theatrical effect. And even as he spoke, the
Herr Vicar entered.
Linnet gazed at him, dumb with awe, surprise, and amazement. How
had he ever got here? It was her own parish priest⁠—⁠her confessor from St
Valentin!

CHAPTER XIX

SPIRITUAL WEAPONS

The Herr Vicar in Meran! It was wonderful, miraculous!
For a minute or two, Linnet was so utterly taken aback at this
unexpected portent that she hardly knew how to comport herself under such
novel circumstances. Now, that was exactly the result Andreas Hausberger
had counted upon. Andreas loved not the Church, to be sure, but, like all
sound strategists, political or social, he knew how to make use of it for his
own wise purposes. As soon as ever he learned from Franz Lindner how
things were going on between Linnet and her Engländer, and had
ascertained by private inquiry from the Herr Oberkellner at the Erzherzog
Johann that Herr Will was going away for a few days’ tour among the
Botzen Dolomites,⁠—⁠why, taking opportunity by the forelock, he
telegraphed at once to the Herr Vicar at St Valentin to come on by the first
train, all expenses paid, over the Brenner to Meran, on purpose to save the
soul of an erring member of his flock, in imminent danger of faith and
morals, from a heretic Englishman. And the Herr Vicar, in return, though he
loved not Andreas⁠—⁠for the wirth was a Liberal, an enemy of the “Blacks,”
and reputed to be even not far short of a freethinker⁠—⁠the Herr Vicar, for his
part, was by no means averse to a pleasant holiday in a fashionable
watering-place south of the Alps at that delightful season, especially if some
one else was to pay the piper. It is well to combine the salvation of souls
with an agreeable excursion. The Herr Vicar was prepared to make free use
of the Mammon of Unrighteousness⁠—⁠in the Church’s service; a good
pastor employs it without stint or compunction to secure the eternal bliss of
the particular flock committed to his guidance.
Not that the astute priest began at once with the matter in hand, on
which Herr Andreas had already most amply coached him. He was far too
wise and politic a fisher of souls for so clumsy a procedure. He angled
gently. He started on his task by striking, first, all the familiar home chords
of St Valentin. The moment he entered the room, indeed, Linnet rushed up
and seized his hand⁠—⁠she had known him from her childhood, and taken the
mass from him often; she had confessed to him her sins, and received time
and again his paternal blessing. At such a moment as that any old friend
from St Valentin would have been a welcome counsellor: how much more
then the Herr Vicar, who had taught her the Credo, and the Vater Unser, and
the Ave; who had prepared her lisping lips for First Communion; who had

absolved her from her sins from her babyhood onward! And he had seen
that dear mother only the day before! How she flooded him with questions
as to everyone at St Valentin.
The Herr Vicar, in reply, folding two plump hands over his capacious
waistband, sank back in an easy-chair, and answered her at full length as to
all that had happened since she left the village. The good mother was well,
very well indeed, seldom better in November; some holy oil rubbed on
night and morning, had proved highly effectual against her threatened
rheumatism. Oh yes; she had duly received the five florins that Linnet sent
her⁠—⁠thanks very much for them⁠—⁠and had expended two of them, as
Linnet would no doubt herself have wished, in the performance of a mass
for the deliverance of the dear father’s soul from purgatory. She knew the
Herr Vicar was coming to Meran, and would see her daughter, and she had
sent many messages (all detailed at full length)⁠—⁠how the cow with the
crooked horn was giving no milk, and how the cat had five kittens, and how
pleased they all were to hear at St Valentin there was talk Linnet was to
make such a brilliant marriage.
Then poor Linnet faltered out, half-sobbing again, when the Herr Vicar
spoke of that mass for the repose of her father’s soul, how great a trial it had
been to her to be away from St Valentin for the first time in her life on All
Souls Day⁠—⁠the Feast of the Dead⁠—⁠when it had always been her custom to
lay a little wreath, and burn four small tapers on her father’s grave in the
village churchyard. She was afraid that dear spirit in its present home would
feel itself neglected by the duty unperformed in due season.
But the Herr Vicar, with a benign smile, was happy he should be able to
reassure her as to this matter. The candles and the wreath had been
forthcoming as usual; he had seen to them himself⁠—⁠at Herr Andreas’s
request, who had written to him on the subject from Meran most
thoughtfully.
That was kind, Linnet thought, far kinder than she ever could have
expected from Andreas. But that wasn’t all. He had provided in many ways,
or intended to provide, for the good mother’s comfort. Then the Herr Vicar
went on to speak still more of Andreas, who slipped out as he spoke,
leaving priest and penitent alone together. So Herr Andreas, it seemed, was
going to marry her! For a girl like her, that was a very great honour. And the
sooner the better, indeed; the sooner the better! These were grave and
painful rumours now afloat in St Valentin⁠—⁠and the Herr Vicar shook his

head in solemn warning⁠—⁠grave and painful rumours, how Linnet had been
seen on the hillsides more than once⁠—⁠with an English heretic. And he had
followed her to Innsbruck! and then to Meran! and now, Heaven knew what
he was trying to do with her! ’Twas a dangerous thing, a compromising
thing (the Herr Vicar thought) for a girl to get involved in an affair like that
with a man so much above herself in position and station. But Herr Andreas
was so kind, and consented to overlook it; there were very few men who in
a similar case would act like Herr Andreas. In other matters the Herr Vicar
had withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; but in this, he
had behaved like a generous gentleman.
To all which, poor Linnet, hiding her face in her hands, only made
answer once more, “I can never marry Andreas Hausberger.”
“Why not?” the priest asked, sharply.
And Linnet, hardly knowing how to answer him for fear and shame, yet
murmured very low, “Because I don’t love him.”
Then the Herr Vicar, thus aroused, went off at a tangent into a clerical
exhortation on the nature, duties, and inducements of matrimony. We must
remember that, in these matters, the wishes of the flesh were not alone or
even chiefly to be consulted. They were of minor importance. There was
her duty as a daughter, for example: Herr Andreas was rich; how much
might he not do to lighten her mother’s old age? how much to release her
poor father’s soul from the flames of purgatory? There was her duty as a
woman, and a child of the Church; how much might not Herr Andreas’s
money enable her to accomplish for the good of the world and for the souls
of her people? She was still a giddy girl. What temptations such a marriage
would enable her to avoid; what a brilliant future in the end it might open
out before her! And then these floating rumours had disturbed him much;
on his way from Jenbach, if she would only believe him, he had said
prayers on her behalf to Our Lady, to preserve her honour.
But Linnet, raising her head, and looking him straight in the eyes, made
answer at last in these wicked, rebellious words, “I love the Engländer! Ah,
I love the Engländer! If ever I marry at all, I’ll marry the Engländer!”
The Herr Vicar grew grave. This was a case, indeed, not for humouring
and coaxing, but for the sternest admonition. And he administered it without
stint. With the simple directness of the Tyrolese priest, accustomed to deal
with coarse, straightforward natures, he spoke the plain truth; he brought
her future sin home to her with homely force and unvarnished language. In

the first place, this young man clearly meant no good by her. That was
obvious to everyone. Now, if he were one of her own sort, a faithful son of
the Church, and a Tyrolese jäger, well, the Herr Vicar might, in that case,
have been disposed, no doubt, to be somewhat more lenient. He admitted,
while he deplored, the temptations and difficulties of a sennerin’s life, and
was never too hard on them. And besides, in such circumstances, the young
man might mean in the end to marry her. But this Engländer assuredly
meant nothing of the kind; and, what was worse, even if he did, the Herr
Vicar could by no means approve of such a union. The Holy See, acting as
ever on the Apostolic advice, “Be not unequally yoked together with
unbelievers,” disallowed and discouraged the union of Catholics with Jews,
heretics, infidels, and other schismatics, under one or other of which unholy
categories (and the Herr Vicar frowned) he must needs place her Engländer.
True, the Holy Father was sometimes pleased, on good cause duly shown,
to grant certain persons an exceptional dispensation. But even if the
Engländer desired to marry her, which was scarcely likely, and even if he
consented to invoke such aid, which was still more improbable, how could
he, the Herr Vicar, knowing the young man’s circumstances, back up such a
request?⁠—⁠how consign a lamb of his flock to the keeping of an infidel?
Every sentiment of gratitude should bind her to Herr Andreas. Every feeling
of a Catholic should turn her instinctively away from the false wiles of a
schismatic.
To all which theological argument, Linnet, raising her head, and
wringing her hands, only answered once more, in a wildly despairing voice,
“But I love him, I love him!”
The priest saw at once this was a case for strong measures. Unless he
adopted them, a lamb might slip from his pastoral grasp, a doubtful soul
might stray for ever from the fold of true believers. He put on at once the
set tone and manner of the confessional. It was no longer a question now of
merely meeting Herr Andreas’s wishes⁠—⁠though Herr Andreas’s aid would
be most useful indeed in the affairs of the parish; it was a question of
preserving this poor sheep of his flock from everlasting perdition. What are
a few fleeting years, with this lover or that, compared with an eternity of
unceasing torment? The Herr Vicar was an honest and conscientious man,
according to his lights; this poor girl was in deadly danger of her immortal
soul⁠—⁠and that window for the chancel, which Herr Andreas vowed, would

be a work of piety most pleasing to their holy patron saint, the blessed
Valentin.
So, with all the strength of imagery he possessed at his command, the
priest began to play of deliberate design upon the chords of poor Linnet’s
superstitious terror. In horribly vivid and realistic language, such as only a
Tyrolese tongue could command, he conjured up before her mind that
familiar picture of dead souls in purgatory, lost souls in torment. He poured
out upon her trembling head all the thunders of the Church against unholy
love, or, what came to the same thing, against an uncatholic union. Linnet
listened, and cowered. To you and me, this would just have been a well-
meaning but ignorant parish priest; to Linnet, he was the embodied voice of
all Catholic Christendom. She had sat upon his knees; she had learnt
prayers from his lips; she had looked upon him for years as the mouthpiece
of whatever was right and just and holy. And now, he was bringing all the
weight of his authority to bear against the dictates of her poor hot heart; he
was terrifying her with his words; he was denouncing upon her the horrible
woes of apostasy. Whether the man meant to marry her or not, all was
equally sin; she was bent on the downward path; she was flying in the face
of God and His priest, to her own destruction. She might marry Andreas or
not⁠—⁠that was a question of inclination; but if she persisted in her relations
with an infidel, who could mean her no good, she was hurrying straight to
the devil and all his angels. And the devil and all his angels were very real
and very near indeed to Linnet; the flames of purgatory were as familiar to
her eyes as the fire on the hearth; the tortures of hell were as solid and as
material as she had seen them pictured on every roadside oratory.
And the effect? Ah, well, only those who know the profound religious
faith of the Tyrolese peasantry can fully understand the appalling effect this
pastoral exhortation produced upon Linnet. It was no new discovery,
indeed. All along, amid the tremulous delight of her first great love, she had
known in her heart this thing she was doing, though sweet⁠—⁠too
sweet⁠—⁠was unspeakably wicked. She was paltering with sin, giving her
heart to a heretic. She herself had seen him pass many a wayside crucifix,
many a shrine of Our Dear Lady, without raising his hat or letting his knee
do obeisance, as was right, before them. He was good, he was kind; in a
purely human sort of way he sympathised with her, and understood her as
no one else in the world had ever yet done; but still⁠—⁠he was a heretic. She
had known that all along; she had known the danger she ran, and the end,

the horrible end, it must finally lead her to. And now, when her parish
priest, her earliest friend, her own tried confessor, pointed out her sin to her,
she quivered and crouched before him in bodily terror and abject
submission. The flames of hell seemed to rise up and take hold of her. And
the more frightened she grew, the more vehement and fierce grew the
priest’s denunciation. He saw his opportunity, and made the best use of it.
What were the few short years of this life to an eternity of pain? What a
dream of brief love to fiery floods for ever?
At last, appalled and horrified, Linnet, bowing her frightened head, held
up her bloodless hands, and begged convulsively for mercy. “Give me
absolution,” she cried; “Father! O Father, forgive me!”
Her confessor seized the occasion, for her soul’s benefit. “Not unless
you abandon him!” he answered, in a very stern voice. “While you remain
in your sin, how can God’s priest absolve you?”
Linnet wrung her hands for a moment in silent agony. She couldn’t give
him up! Oh, no; she couldn’t! “Father,” she cried at last with a despairing
burst, “what shall I do to be saved? Guide me! Save me!”
The priest snatched at the chance. “Will you come back to St Valentin
to-morrow?” he asked, with two uplifted fingers poised half-doubtful in air,
as if waiting to bless her. “Will you come back to St Valentin⁠—⁠and marry
Andreas Hausberger?”
In an agony of abject religious terror, Linnet bowed her head. “Is there
no other way?” she cried, trembling, “No other way of salvation?”
The priest pressed his advantage. “If you died to-night,” he answered, in
a very solemn voice, “you would die in your sin, and hell’s mouth would
yawn wide for you. Accept the escape an honourable man offers you, and
be clear of your heretic!”
Linnet flung herself on her knees, and clasped her hands before him.
The horrors of eternity and of the offended Church made her shake in every
limb. She was half-dumb with terror.
“I’ll do as you wish, Father,” she moaned, in a voice of hushed awe, “if
you’ll only bless me. I’ll go back to St Valentin and marry Andreas
Hausberger!”

CHAPTER XX

FLORIAN ON MATRIMONY

In spite of the lateness of the season, and Will’s preoccupation, that visit to
the Dolomites turned out a complete success. Rue was in excellent spirits;
Florian was in fine form; Nature smiled compliance, as he consummately
phrased it⁠—⁠in other words, the weather was lovely, the mountains clear of
cloud, the horses fresh, and the roads (for Austria) in very good order. Their
capacious carriage held its party of five comfortably,⁠—⁠for Rue, with her
wonted wisdom, had consulted Mrs Grundy’s feelings by inviting an old
Indian colonel and his wife, whose acquaintance she had picked up at the
Erzherzog Johann, to accompany them on their trip, and chaperon the
expedition. Rue herself enjoyed those four days immensely. She had lots of
long talks with Will on the hillsides, and she noticed Will spoke
much⁠—⁠though always in an abstract and highly impersonal way⁠—⁠of the
human heart, its doubts and its difficulties. He was thinking of Linnet, who
engaged his thoughts much during that enforced absence; but Rue imagined
he was thinking of himself and her, and was glad accordingly. She was
growing very fond of her English poet. She hoped and half-believed he in
turn was growing fond of her.
As for Will, now he was away from Linnet for awhile, he began to think
much more seriously than he had ever thought before of the nature of his
relations with her, and the end to which they were inevitably leading him.
As long as Linnet was near, as long as he could hold her hand in his, and
look deep into her eyes, and hear that wonderful voice of hers carolling out
some sweet song for his ear alone among the clambering vineyards,⁠—⁠why,
he could think of nothing else but the passing joy and delight of her
immediate presence. Imperceptibly, and half-unconsciously to himself, she
had grown very dear to him. But now that he was away from her, and alone
with Rue, he began to realise how much he longed to be once more by her
side⁠—⁠how little he was prepared to do without her, how deeply she had
entwined herself into his inmost being. Again and again the question
presented itself to his mind, “When I go back to Meran, on what footing
shall I stand with her? If I find it so hard to run away for four days, how
shall I ever run away from her for ever and ever?”
Besides, during those few happy weeks at Meran, Linnet had begun to
reveal herself to him as another person. He was catching faint glimpses now
of the profounder depths of that deeply artistic, though as yet almost wholly

undeveloped, character. The books he had read to her she understood so
fast; the things he had told her she caught at so readily; the change to new
scenes seemed so soon to quicken and stimulate all her latent faculties. Had
not Nature said of her, as of Wordsworth’s country lass, “She shall be mine
and I will make A lady of my own”? For that she was a lady indeed had
been forcing itself every day more and more plainly upon Will’s mind, as he
walked and talked with her. At Innsbruck, he had thought more than once to
himself, “How could one dream in a world where there are women like
Rue, of tying oneself for life to this sweet-voiced alp-girl?” Among the
Dolomites, three weeks later, he asked himself rather, “How could one ever
be content with mere brightness and sunniness like that charming Rue’s, in
a world which holds women so tender, so true, and so passionate as
Linnet?”
Slowly, bit by bit, he began to wonder how he could muster up courage
to tear himself away again⁠—⁠and, if he did, for how long he could manage
to keep away from her? And then, as he debated, there arose in his mind the
profounder question of justice or injustice to Linnet. Was it right of him so
deeply to engage her affections, unless he meant by it something real,
something sure, something definite? She loved him so well that to leave her
now would surely break her heart for her. What end could there be to this
serious complication save the end he had so strenuously denied to Florian?
On the very last evening of their drive through those great bare
unearthly peaks that look down upon Botzen, Florian came into Will’s room
for an evening gossip. They sat up long over the smouldering embers of a
fragrant pinewood fire. There’s nothing more confidential than young men’s
confabulations over a smouldering hearth in the small hours of the morning.
The two friends talked⁠—⁠and talked, and talked, and talked⁠—⁠till at last Will
was moved to make a clean breast of his feelings in the matter to Florian.
He put his dilemma neatly. He acknowledged he was going just where
Florian had said he would go. “I pointed out the noose to you,” the
epicurean philosopher observed, with bland self-satisfaction, “and you’ve
run your neck right into it. Instead of playing with her like a doll as a
sensible man would have done, you’ve simply gone ahead and lost your
heart outright to her. Foolish, foolish, exceedingly foolish; but, just what I
expected from you. I said from the very first, ‘Now mark my words,
Deverill, as sure as eggs is eggs, you’ll end by marrying her.’ ”

“I don’t say I’ll marry her now,” Will replied, somewhat sheepishly.
“How can I, indeed? I’ve got nothing to marry on. I find it hard enough
work to keep body and soul together for myself in London, without thinking
of an engagement to keep somebody else’s into the bargain.”
“Then what do you mean to do?” Florian inquired, with sound common-
sense. “If you don’t mean to marry her, and you don’t mean to harm her,
and you can’t go away from her, and you can’t afford to stop with
her,⁠—⁠why, what possible new term are you going to introduce into human
relations and the English language to cover your ways with her?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know,” Will answered, in a somewhat hopeless
and helpless voice, piling the embers together in the centre as he spoke, just
to keep them alight for some minutes longer. “There’s the rub. I admit it.
Nobody feels it more than I do. But I don’t see any possible kind of way out
of it. I’ve been thinking to myself⁠—⁠or perhaps half-thinking⁠—⁠I might
manage it like this, if Linnet would assent to it. We might get married
first⁠——”
Florian raised one warning hand, and nodded his shapely head up and
down two or three times solemnly. “I told you so,” he interposed, in a tone
of most mitigated and mournful triumph. “There we get at it at last. You
have said the word. I was sure ’twould come to that. Marry, marry, marry!”
“And then,” Will went on, with a very shamefaced air, never heeding his
comment, “what’s enough for one’s enough for two, they say⁠—⁠or very
nearly. I thought we might live in lodgings quite quietly for awhile,
somewhere cheap, in London⁠——”
“Not live,” Florian corrected gravely, with another sage nod of that
sapient head; “lurk, linger, vegetate. A very sad end! A most dismal
downfall! I see it all: Surrey side, thirty shillings a week; cold mutton for
dinner; bread and cheese for lunch; an ill-furnished parlour, a sloppy-faced
slavey! I know the sort of thing. Pah! My gorge rises at it!”
“And then, I could get Linnet’s voice trained and prepared for the
stage,” Will continued, perusing his boots, “and work very hard myself to
keep us both alive till she could come out in public. In a year or two, I feel
sure, if I watched her close and saw her capabilities, I could write and
compose some good piece of my own to suit her exactly. With me to make
the songs, and Linnet to interpret them, I believe, sooner or later, we ought
easily to earn a very good livelihood. But it’d be a hard pull first; I don’t

conceal that from myself. We’d have a struggle for life, though in the end, I
feel sure, we’d live it down and conquer.”
Florian lighted a cigarette and watched the thin blue smoke curl upward,
languidly. “Love’s young dream!” he mused to himself with a placid smile
of superior wisdom. “I know the style of old. Bread and cheese and kisses!
Very charming, very charming! Chorus hymeneal of the most approved
pattern. So odd, so interesting! I’ve often asked myself what it is in the
world that leads otherwise sensible and intelligent fellows to make wrecks
of their lives in this incredible way⁠—⁠and all for the sake of somebody else’s
daughter! Why this insane desire to relieve some other man of his natural
responsibilities? I account for it in my own mind on evolutionary principles.
Marriage, it seems to me, is an irrational and incomprehensible civilised
instinct, by which the individual sacrifices himself on the shrine of duty for
the benefit of the species. Have you ever heard of the lemmings?”
“The lemmings!” Will repeated, unable to conceive the connection in
Florian’s mind between two such totally dissimilar and unrelated subjects.
“Not those little brown animals like rats or marmots they have in Norway?”
“Precisely,” Florian answered, waving his cigarette airily. “Those little
brown animals like rats or marmots they have in Norway. You put it like a
dictionary. Well, every year or two, you know, an irresistible desire seizes
on many myriads of those misguided rodents at once, to march straight to
the sea in a body together, plunge boldly into the water, and swim out in a
straight line, without rhyme or reason, till they can swim no farther but
drown themselves by cartloads. What’s the origin of this swarmery? It’s
only an instinct which keeps down the number of the lemmings, and so acts
as a check against over-population. A beautiful and ingenious provision of
Nature they call it!” and Florian smiled sweetly. “I’ve always thought,” he
went on, puffing a contemptuous ring of smoke from his pursed-up lips,
“that marriage among mankind was a very similar instinct. It’s death to the
individual⁠—⁠mental and moral death; but it ensures at least a due
continuance of the species. The wise man doesn’t marry; he knows too well
for that; he stands by and looks on; but he leaves no descendants, and his
wisdom dies with him. Whereas the foolish burden themselves with a wife
and family, and become thereby the perpetuators of their race in future. It’s
a wonderful dispensation; I admire it⁠—⁠at a distance!”
“But you said you’d marry yourself,” Will objected, “if you met the
right person; and, to tell you the truth, Florian, I fancied you’d been rather

markedly attentive to Rue for the last few weeks or so.”
Florian stroked a smooth small chin with five meditative fingers.
“That’s quite another matter,” he answered, in a self-satisfied tone.
“Circumstances, it has been well remarked by an anonymous thinker, alter
cases. If an Oriental potentate in all his glory were to order me to flop down
on my marrow-bones before him and kiss his imperial foot as an act of pure
homage, I should take my proud stand as a British subject, and promptly
decline so degrading a ceremony. But if he offered me a thousand pounds
down to comply with his wishes, I would give the polite request my most
earnest consideration. If he made it ten thousand, I would almost certainly
accede; and if he went to half-a-million, which is a fortune for life, well, no
gentleman on earth could dream of disputing the question any further with
him. Just so, I say, with marriage. If a lady desires me, without due cause
assigned, to become her abject slave, and serve her alone for a lifetime, I
will politely but firmly answer, ‘No, thank you.’ If she confers upon me,
incidentally, a modest competence, I shall perpend for a moment, and
murmur, ‘Well, possibly.’ But if she renders me independent and
comfortable for life, with a chance of surrounding myself with books,
pictures, music, without a moment’s hesitation I shall answer, ‘Like a bird,’
to her. Slavery, in short, though in itself disagreeable, may be mitigated or
altogether outweighed by concomitant advantages.”
“Florian,” Will said, earnestly, “I don’t know what you mean. You speak
a foreign language to me. If I felt like that, I could never bring myself to
marry any woman. If I married at all, I must do it for the sake of the girl I
loved⁠—⁠and to make her happy.”
Florian gazed at him compassionately. “Quixotic,” he answered low,
shaking his sculpturesque head once or twice with a face of solemn
warning. “Quixotic, exceedingly! The pure lemming instinct; they will rush
into it! It’s the moth and the candle again: dazzle, buzz, and flutter,⁠—⁠and
pom! pom! pom!⁠—⁠in a second, you’re caught, and sizzled hot in the flame,
and reduced to ashes. That’s how it’ll be with you, my dear fellow: you’ll
go back to Meran and, by Jingo, to-morrow, you’ll go straight up the hill,
and ask the cow-girl to marry you.”
“I think I will,” the poet answered, taking up his candlestick with a sigh
to leave the room. “I think I will, Florian. I’ll fight it out to the bitter end,
sloppy slavey and all, on your threatened south side, in those dingy

lodgings.” And he took himself off with a hurried nod to his bland
companion.
Florian rose, and closed the door behind the poet softly. He had played
his cards well, remarkably well, that evening. If he wanted to drive Will
into proposing to Linnet, he had gone the right way to effect his object.
“And I,” he thought to himself with a contented smile, “will stand a fair
chance with Rue, without fear of a rival, when once he’s gone off and got
well married to his cow-girl. It’ll be interesting to ask them to a nice little
dinner, from their Surrey side garret, at our snug small den in Park Lane or
South Kensington. Park Lane’s the most fashionable, but South
Kensington’s the pleasantest:

In Cromwell Road did Florian Wood,
A stately pleasure dome decree.

Such a palace of art as it will be, too! I can see it now, in my mind’s eye,
Horatio!⁠—⁠Botticellis, Della Robbias, Elzevirs, Stradivariuses! William
Morris on the floor! Lewis Day on the ceiling! It rises like an exhalation, all
beautiful to behold! Such things might I do⁠—⁠with Rue’s seven hundred
thousand!”

CHAPTER XXI

FORTUNE’S WHEEL

It was with no little trepidation that Will mounted the Küchelberg on the
morning after his return to Meran from the Dolomites. Would Linnet be
there, he wondered, or would he somehow miss her? He didn’t know why,
but a certain vague foreboding of possible evil possessed his soul. He was
dimly conscious to himself of danger ahead. He couldn’t feel reassured till
he stood once more face to face with Linnet.
When he arrived at the appointed place, however, by the Station of the
Cross which represented the Comforting of the Daughters of Jerusalem, a
cold shudder of alarm came over him suddenly. No Linnet there! Not a sign
of her to be seen! And hitherto she had always kept her tryst before him. He
took out his watch and looked. Ha, a moment’s respite! In his eagerness, he
had arrived five minutes early. But Linnet was usually, even so, five
minutes ahead of him. He couldn’t make it out; this was ominous, very!
With heart standing still, he waited a quarter of an hour⁠—⁠half-an-
hour⁠—⁠three-quarters. And still no Linnet came!⁠—⁠And still he watched
eagerly. He paced up and down, looking again and again at his watch with
impatience. Could she have mistaken the place? Yet he told her plain
enough! On the bare chance of some error, he would try the other stations.
He went to them all, one by one, from the Crown of Thorns to the Calvary.
The same luck still! No Linnet at any of them! Then he mounted the great
boss of ice-worn rock with the bench on its top, that commands far and
wide the whole expanse of the Küchelberg. Gazing down on every side
upon the long, low hog’s back, he saw nobody all around save the women
in the fields, watching their cows at pasture, and the men with the carts
urging overtasked oxen to drag too heavy a load up the cobble-paved hill-
track.
Thoroughly alarmed by this time, and uncertain how to act, Will
determined to take a very bold measure. He descended the hill once more,
and, passing under the archway of the old town gate, and through the
narrow streets, and past the high-towered parish church, he made his way
straight to Andreas Hausberger’s inn in the street that is called Unter den
Lauben. At the doorway, Franz Lindner, all on fire, was standing. Wrath
smouldered in his face; his hat was cocked fiercely; his feather, turned
Robblerwise, looked angrier, more defiant, more aggressive than ever. But
to Will’s immense surprise, the village champion, instead of scowling

challenge at him, or receding under the arch, stepped forward with
outstretched palm to meet him. He grasped Will’s hand hard. His pressure
struck some note of a common misfortune.
“You’ve come to look for Linnet?” he said, holding his head very
haughtily. “She wasn’t on the hill? She’d promised to meet you there? Well,
we’re both in the same box, it seems. He’s done two of us at once. This is
indeed a dirty trick Andreas Hausberger has played upon us!”
“What do you mean?” Will cried, aghast, clapping his hand to his head.
“Where’s Linnet? I want to see her.”
“You won’t see her ever again as Lina Telser, that’s sure,” the Robbler
answered aloud, with an indignant gesture. His wrath against Andreas had
wholly swallowed up all memory of his little quarrel on the hills with Will
Deverill. It was common cause now. Andreas had outwitted both of them.
“You can’t mean to tell me⁠——” Will cried, drawing back in horror.
Franz took him up sharply. “Yes; I do mean to tell you just what I say,”
he answered, knitting his brows. “Andreas Hausberger has gone off with
her . . . to St Valentin . . . to marry her.”
It was a bolt from the blue⁠—⁠an unforeseen thunder-stroke. Will raised
his hat from his brow, and held his hand on his stunned and astonished
forehead. “To marry her!” he repeated, half-dazed at the bare thought.
“Andreas Hausberger to marry her!⁠—⁠to marry Linnet! Oh no; it can’t be
true; you never can mean it!”
Franz stared at him doggedly. “He gave me the slip on Wednesday
morning,” he answered, with a resounding German oath. “He went off quite
secretly. May the Evil One requite him! He knew if he told me beforehand
I’d have planted my good knife to the handle in his heart. So he said never a
word, but went off unexpectedly, with Linnet and Philippina, leaving the
rest of us here stranded, but cancelling all engagements for the next three
evenings. The white-livered cur! He’ll never dare to come back again! He
knows if I meet him now⁠—⁠it’ll be this in his black heart!” And Franz
tapped significantly the short hunting knife that stuck out from his leather
belt in true jäger fashion.
“And you haven’t followed him?” Will exclaimed, taken aback at the
man’s inaction. “You know all this, and you haven’t gone after him to
prevent the wedding!” In an emergency like the present one, with Linnet’s
happiness at stake, he was only too ready to accept as an ally even the
village bully.

Franz shrugged his broad shoulders. “How could I?” he asked,
helplessly. “Have I money at command? Have I wealth like the wirth, to
pay my fare all the way from Meran to Jenbach?”
Will drew back with a deep sigh. He had never thought of that difficulty.
It’s so natural to us all to have money in our pockets, or at least at our
command, for any great emergency, that we seldom realise how insuperable
a barrier a bare hundred miles may often seem to men of other classes. It
was as impossible for Franz Lindner to get from Meran to St Valentin at a
day’s notice as for most of us to buy up the house of Rothschild.
“Come with me!” Will cried, starting up. “The man has cheated us
vilely. Come with me to St Valentin, Herr Franz⁠—⁠forget our
differences⁠—⁠and before he has time to get through with the legal
formalities, help me, help me, to prevent this nefarious wedding!”
“It’s too late to prevent it now!” Franz answered, shaking his head, with
a settled gloom on his countenance. “It’s all over by this. She’s his wife
already. They were married on Friday.”
At those words Will felt his heart stand still within him. He gasped for
breath. He steadied himself mechanically. Never till that moment had he
known how much he loved the Tyrolese singer-girl, and now the blow had
come, he couldn’t even believe it. “Married!” he faltered out in a broken
voice; “what, married already! Linnet married to that man! Oh, impossible!
Impossible!”
“But it’s true, all the same,” Franz answered sturdily. “Philippina was
there, and she saw them married. She came back last night to collect their
things and pack up for Italy. She’s to meet them to-morrow by the mid-day
train, at a place called Verona.”
“But how did he do it in the time?” Will exclaimed still incredulous, and
clinging still to the last straw with a drowning man’s instinct. “Your
Austrian law has so many formalities. Perhaps it’s a story the man has made
up on purpose to deceive us. He may have told Philippina, and she may be
in league with him.”
Franz shook his head with gloomy determination. “No, no,” he said; “it
won’t do; don’t flatter your soul with that; there’s no doubt at all in the
world about it. He’s as deep as a well, and as false as a fox, and he’d laid all
his plans very cunningly beforehand. He made the arrangements and swore
to the Civil Act without consulting Linnet. He and the priest were in league,
and the priest helped him out with it. At the very last moment, Andreas

carried her off, and before she could say nay, he went straight through and
married her.”
Will’s brain reeled round; his mind seemed to fail him. The sense of his
loss, his irreparable loss, deadened for the moment every other feeling.
Linnet gone from him for ever! Linnet married to somebody else!⁠—⁠and that
somebody else so cold, so calculating, so cruel a man as Andreas
Hausberger! It was terrible to contemplate. “He must have forced her to do
it!” the Englishman cried in his distress. “But how could she ever consent?
How could she ever submit? I can’t believe it! I can’t even understand it!”
“He didn’t exactly force her,” Franz answered, tilting his hat still more
angrily on one side of his head. “But he brought the Herr Vicar from St
Valentin to persuade her; and you know what priests are, and you know
what women! The Herr Vicar just turned on purgatory and all the rest of it
to frighten the poor child⁠—⁠so Philippina says. She was crying all the time.
She cried in the train, and she cried on the road, and she cried in the church,
and she cried at the altar! She cried worst of all when Herr Andreas took her
home to the Wirthshaus to supper. . . . But I’ll be even with him yet.” And
Franz tapped his knife once more. “When I meet him again⁠—⁠ten thousand
devils!⁠—⁠this goes right up to the hilt in the base black heart of him!”
“Can I see Philippina?” Will gasped out, white as death.
“Yes; certainly you can see her,” the Robbler answered with a burst,
leading him in through the dark archway to the sunless courtyard. “Come
this way into the parlour. She’s upstairs just now, but I’ll bring her down to
speak to you.”
In a minute or two more, sure enough, Philippina appeared in her very
best dress, looking bright and smiling. She was garrulous as usual, and most
gay and lively. “Oh yes; they had been to St Valentin, and no mistake⁠—⁠the
Herr Vicar going with them⁠—⁠no scandal of any sort⁠—⁠and ’twas a very
grand affair; never anything like it! Andreas Hausberger had spared no
expense or trouble; red wine at the supper, and fiddlers for the dance, and
all the world of the valley bidden to the feast on the night of the wedding!
Linnet had cried a good deal; ach, yes, she had cried, how she had
cried⁠—⁠but cried!⁠—⁠mein Gott, it was wonderful! But there, girls always will
cry when they’re going to be married; and you know, Herr Will,” archly,
“she was very, very fond of you.” For herself, Philippina couldn’t think
what the child had to cry about⁠—⁠except, of course, what you call her
feelings; but all she could say was, she’d be very glad herself to make such

a match as Lina Telser was making. Why, would the gnädige Herr believe
it? Herr Andreas was going to take her to a place called Mailand, away off
in Italy, to train her for the stage⁠—⁠the operatic stage⁠—⁠and make in the end
a real grand lady of her!
Will sat down on a wooden chair by the rough little table, held his face
in his hands, and listened all aghast to Philippina’s artless outpourings. The
sennerin, unheeding his obvious distress, went on to describe in her most
glowing terms the magnificence of the wedding, and of the wirth’s
entertainment. St Valentin hardly knew itself. Andreas had had a wedding-
dress, oh, a beautiful wedding-dress, made beforehand, as a surprise, at
Meran for Linnet⁠—⁠a white silk wedding-dress from a Vienna clothes-
maker’s on the Promenade, by the Stephanie Garten; it was cut to measure
from an old bodice of Linnet’s, which he abstracted all unknown from her
box on purpose; and it fitted her like a glove, and she was ever so much
admired in it. And all the young men thought Andreas the luckiest dog in
the whole Tyrol; and cousin Fridolin had almost wanted to fight him for his
bride; but Linnet intervened, and wouldn’t let them have it out for her. “And
on the morning after the marriage,” Philippina concluded, with wide open
eyes, “there wasn’t a cradle at the door, though Linnet was a sennerin⁠—⁠not
one single cradle.”
“Of course not!” Franz Lindner cried, bridling up at the bare suggestion,
and frowning native wrath at her.
“But perhaps if you’d been there, Franz⁠——” Philippina put in saucily,
and then broke off short, like a discreet maiden.
The Robbler rose above himself in his generous indignation that anyone
should dare even to hint such things about their peerless Linnet. He
clenched his fist hard. “If a man had said that, my girl,” he cried, fingering
his knife involuntarily, “though she’s Andreas Hausberger’s wife, he’d have
paid with his blood for it.”
Philippina for a moment stood silent and overawed. Then, recovering
herself at once, with a sudden little recollection, she thrust her hand into her
bosom and drew out a small note, which she passed to Will openly. “Oh, I
forgot,” she exclaimed; “I was to give you this, Herr Will. Linnet asked me
to take it to you on the morning of her marriage.”
Will opened it, and read. It was written in a shaky round hand like a
servant’s, and its German orthography was not wholly above criticism. But
it went to Will’s heart like a dagger for all that.

“Dear Herr Will,” it began, simply, “I write to you to-night, the last
night that I may, on the eve of my wedding; for to-morrow I may not. When
Andreas asked me first, it seemed to me impossible. But the Herr Vicar told
me it was sin to love a heretic; you did not mean to marry me, and if you
did, you would drag my soul down to eternal perdition. And then, the good
Mother, and the dear Father in purgatory! So between them they made me
do it, and I dared not refuse. It is hard to refuse when one’s priest
commands one. Yet, dear Herr Will, I loved you; ah, how I loved you! and I
know it is sin; but, may Our Dear Frau forgive me, as long as I live, I shall
always love you! Though I never must see you again.⁠—⁠Your heart-broken
Linnet.”
Will folded it reverently, and slipped it into the pocket just over his
heart. “And tell her, Philippina,” he said, “when you see her at Verona, I had
come back to-day to ask her to marry me.”

CHAPTER XXII

A WOMAN’S STRATAGEM

For the next three years, Will heard and saw nothing more of Linnet. Not
that he failed to make indirect inquiries, as time went on, from every likely
source, as to her passing whereabouts; once Linnet was lost to him, he
realised to himself how deeply he had loved her, how much he had admired
her. But, for her happiness’ sake, he felt it would be wrong of him to write
to her direct, or attempt in any way to put himself into personal
communication with her. She was Andreas Hausberger’s wife now, and
there he must leave her. He knew himself too well, he knew Linnet too well,
too, to cheat himself with false ideas of mere friendship in future. A woman
with so passionate a nature as hers, married against her will to a man she
could never love, and meeting once more the man whom she loved, the man
who really loved her, must find such friendship a dangerous pitfall. So, for
the very love’s sake he bore her, he refrained from attempting to
communicate with her directly; and all indirect inquiries failed to elicit
anything more than the bare fact, already known to him, that Linnet was
being musically educated for the stage, in Germany and Italy.
Three years, however, must be got through somehow, no matter how
drearily; and during those next three years many things of many sorts
happened to Will Deverill. To begin with, he was steadily growing in name
and fame, in the stage-world of London, as a composer and playwright.
That was mainly Rue’s doing; for Rue, having once taken her Englishman
up, was by no means disposed to lay him down again easily. Not twice in
her life, indeed, does even a pretty American with money at her back stand
her solid chance of booming a poet. And Rue boomed Will steadily, after
the manner of her countrymen. It didn’t escape her quick womanly eye,
indeed, that Linnet’s sudden marriage and hasty flight to Italy had produced
a deep effect on Will’s spirits for the moment. But it was only for the
moment, she hoped and believed⁠—⁠a mere passing whim, a poet’s fancy;
impossible that a man who thought and wrote like Will Deverill⁠—⁠a bard of
lofty aim and exquisite imaginings, one who on honey-dew had fed and
drunk the milk of Paradise⁠—⁠should be permanently enslaved by a Tyrolese
cow-girl. Surely, in the end, common-sense and good taste and right feeling
must prevail; he must come back at last⁠—⁠well⁠—⁠to a woman worthy of him!
So, very shortly after Will’s return to London, Rue decided on a
complete change in her plans for the winter, and made up her mind, instead

of going on as she had intended to Rome and Naples, to take a house for the
season in Mayfair or South Kensington. But Florian would hear of no such
temporary expedients; she must have a home of her own in London, he
said,⁠—⁠in the world’s metropolis,⁠—⁠and he himself would choose it for her.
So he found her a shelter in Hans Place, Chelsea, and fitted it up beforehand
with becoming magnificence⁠—⁠just such a palace of art as he had dreamed
of among the Dolomites; though, to be sure, his own chance of inhabiting it
now seemed considerably lessened, since the failure of his scheme for
putting off Will Deverill on his musical sennerin. Still, Florian furnished it,
all the same, with a strictly business eye to his own tastes and fancies⁠—⁠in
case of contingencies. There was a drawing-room for Rue, of course quite
utterly Hellenic; there was a dining-room for Society, not grim and gloomy,
after the common superstition of all British dining-rooms, but gay and
bright and airy, like Florian himself: for Florian held that the cult of the
sacred dinner bell, though important enough in the wise man’s scheme of
life, should be a blithe and joyous, not a solemn and stolid one; there was a
smoking-room, for which Rue herself had certainly no need, but which
Florian insisted might be useful in the future, as events demanded. “For,
you see,” he said, pointedly, “we’re not in Bombay. You may yet choose a
new friend to light his cigars in it.” All was decorated throughout in the
most modern taste; incandescent wires shed tempered beams through
Venetian glass globes on Liberty brocades and Morris wall-papers. ’Twas a
triumph of ornamental art on a very small scale⁠—⁠an Aladdin’s palace in
Hans Place,⁠—⁠and Florian took good care that paragraphs should get into
the Society papers, both describing the house, and attributing its glories to
his own superintendence.
However, he took good care, too, that due prominence should be given
on every hand to Rue’s own personal claims to social distinction. He was a
first-rate wire-puller. Little notes about the beauty, the wealth, the
cleverness, and the fine taste of the pretty American widow cropped up
spasmodically in Truth and the Pall Mall. Even the Spectator itself, that
high-and-dry organ of intellectual life, deigned to recognise her existence. It
was Florian’s intention, in short, to float his new protégée. Now, all the
world admitted that Florian, if he chose, could float almost anybody; while
Rue, for her part, was without doubt exceptionally easy of flotation. Seven
hundred thousand pounds, to say the truth, would have buoyed up a far
heavier social subject than the pretty and clever New Yorker. Americans are

the fashion; for a woman, at least, the mere fact that she comes from
beyond the mill-pond is in itself just at present a passport to the best society.
But Rue had also money; and money in these days will admit anyone
anywhere. Furthermore, she had good looks, taking manners, much culture,
real cleverness. She was well informed and well read; Society itself, that
collective critic, could find nothing to criticise or to carp at in her
conversation. So, introduced by Florian on one side, and His Excellency the
American Minister on the other, Rue made that spring a perfect triumphal
progress through the London drawing-rooms. She was the fact of the
season; she entertained in her own pretty rooms in Hans Place, where
Florian exhibited his decorative skill with bland satisfaction to dowager-
marchionesses,⁠—⁠“I edited it,” was his pet phrase⁠—⁠while Will Deverill
hung modestly in the background by the door, talking, as was his wont, to
those neglected souls who seemed to him most in need of encouragement
and companionship.
Before two months were out, everybody was talking of Rue as “our new
acquisition.” It was Mrs Palmer this, and Mrs Palmer that. “We understand
Mrs Palmer will not be present at the Duchess of Thingumabob’s dance on
Tuesday.” “Among the guests on the Terrace, we noticed Lord So-and-so,
Lady What’s-her-name of Ware, and Mrs Palmer of New York, whose pretty
house in Hans Place is fast becoming a rallying point for all that is most
interesting in London Society.” Old Miss Beard, indeed, when she arrived
at the Langham Hotel early in May, and found Rue in quiet possession of
the Very Best Houses, was positively scandalised. She declared, with a little
sneer, it was perfectly disgraceful the way That Woman had forced herself
by pure brass on the English Aristocracy. The widow of a dry-goodsman to
give herself such airs!⁠—⁠but there, Miss Beard had begun to despair before
now of the future of Europe! The Nobility and Gentry of England had
degringolated. For true blue blood, she was perfectly convinced, you could
only look nowadays to the heirs of the Puritans, the Knickerbockers, and
the Virginians.
The very first use Rue made of her new-found friends and position in
London was to push Will Deverill’s claims with theatrical managers. Will
had sent the manuscript score of his pretty little open-air operetta,
“Honeysuckle,” to Wildon Blades of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Theatre. And,
before Mr Blades had had time to consider the work submitted to him,
backed up as it was by Florian Wood’s powerful recommendation, Rue’s

new victoria drew up one day at the door of the manager’s house in St
John’s Wood, and Rue herself, in her most becoming and bewitching
costume, stepped out, with her blameless footman’s aid, to interview him.
The pretty little American looked prettier and more charming than ever
that morning. A dainty blush rose readily to her peach-blossom cheeks; her
eyes were cast down; an unwonted tinge of flutter in voice and manner
became her even better than her accustomed serenity. Mr Blades bowed and
smiled as he scanned her card; he was a bullet-headed man with shifty grey
eyes, a dubious mouth, and a sledge-hammer manner. He knew her name
well; Florian had already sung the American’s praises to the astute manager.
They sat down and talked. With many indirect little feminine twists and
turns, Rue gradually got round to the real subject of her visit. She didn’t
approach it straight, of course⁠—⁠what woman ever does?⁠—⁠by stray hints
and roundabout roads she let Mr Blades understand in dim outline she was
to some extent interested⁠—⁠platonically interested⁠—⁠in the success of Will
Deverill’s Tyrolese operetta. Mr Deverill, she explained, was merely a
young poet of musical tastes, whom she had met last year at an hotel in the
Tyrol⁠—⁠a friend of their mutual friend’s, Mr Wood. The manager smiled
wisely with that dubious mouth. Rue saw he drew his own inference⁠—⁠and
drew it wrong; he thought it was Florian in whom her interest centred, not
the unknown poet. Indeed, Florian himself had done his very best already to
produce that impression; if you want to marry a rich woman, it’s not a bad
plan to let her friends and the world at large believe the matter’s as good as
settled already between you. So the manager smiled, and looked intensely
wise. “Anything I can do for any friend of our friend Florian’s,” he said,
politely, “I’m sure will give me the very greatest pleasure.”
Rue was not wholly unwilling he should make this mistake; she could
ask the more easily the favour she had to beg on behalf of Will Deverill.
With many further circumlocutions, and many womanly wiles, she
gradually let the bullet-headed manager see she was very anxious
“Honeysuckle” should be duly produced at an early date at the Duke of
Edinburgh’s. But Mr Blades, for his part, like a man of the world that he
was, was proof against all the smiles and blandishments of the pretty
enchantress. A beautiful woman is thrown away, to say the truth, upon a
theatrical manager; they are his stock-in-trade; he’s accustomed to
bargaining with them, bullying them, quarrelling with them. He regards
them merely as a class of exceptionally exacting and irritating persons, who

presume upon their good looks and their popularity with the public to
excuse the infinite trouble and annoyance they give in their business
relations. So Mr Blades smiled again, this time a hard little mercantile
smile, as of a man unimpressed, and answered briefly, in his sledge-hammer
style, “Now, let’s be frank with one another, at once, Mrs Palmer. I run this
theatre, not for the sake of high art, nor to oblige a lady, but on the vulgarest
and commonest commercial grounds⁠—⁠just to make my living, and get a fair
percentage on the capital I invest in it. I judge by returns, not by literary
merit or artistic value. If Mr Deverill’s little piece seems likely to
pay⁠—⁠why, of course, I’ll produce it. If it don’t, why, I won’t. That’s the
long and the short of it!”
Rue seized her cue at once with American quickness. “Just so,” she
replied, catching him up very sharp, and going straight to the point; “that’s
exactly why I’ve come here. I want you to read this play very soon, and to
say as a candid business man what you think of it. Then I want you to tell
me what you’ll take, money down, to produce it at once, and to run it on
your boards till you see whether it’s likely to succeed or fail⁠—⁠if I give you
a guarantee, secured against bonds, to reimburse you in full for any loss you
may sustain, say, by giving it the chance of a fortnight’s production.”
It was a curious offer. The manager’s shifty grey eyes ran her over with
a sharp little stare of astonishment. Her directness amused him. “Well now,”
he said, “that’s odd; but it’s business-like⁠—⁠for a woman.”
“You understand,” Rue said, blushing crimson, and letting her eyelids
drop once more, “I make this suggestion in strict confidence; I don’t want it
talked about.”
“Certainly, certainly,” Mr Blades replied, with a scrutinising glance.
“Not even to our friend Florian?” And he eyed her quizzingly.
Rue’s face flushed deeper still. “Above all, not to him,” she answered
firmly. “But what do you say to my offer? Is it business or not? Does it
seem to you possible?”
The manager hesitated, and drummed with his finger on the desk before
him. “Well, to tell you the truth, my dear lady,” he answered, evasively, “I
couldn’t very well give you any opinion, good, bad, or indifferent, till I’ve
read the manuscript, and considered it carefully. You see, a play’s not quite
like a book or picture; a deal of capital’s involved in its production; and,
besides, its success or its failure don’t stand quite alone; they mean so much
in the end to the theatre. It won’t do for me to reckon only how many

hundreds or thousands I may possibly lose on this or that particular venture
if it turns out badly; there’s the indirect loss as well to take into
consideration. Every success in a house means success in future; every
failure in a house means gradual increase in the public coldness. It wouldn’t
pay me, you understand, if you were merely to offer me a big lump sum
down to produce a piece with no chance of a run in it. I never produce
anything for anybody on earth unless I believe myself there’s really money
in it. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” and he brightened up most amiably; “I’ll
read it this very day; and then, if I think it won’t prejudice the Duke’s to
bring it out at once, why, . . . I’ll consider whether or not I can accept your
offer.”
“Oh, thank you!” Rue cried, very gratefully indeed; for she was a
simple soul, in spite of her thousands.
The manager drew himself up, and looked stonily grave. He shook his
bullet-head. This charge was most painful. It hurt his feelings as a business
man that a pretty woman should even for one moment suppose he meant to
make a concession to her.
“You’ve nothing to thank me for,” he answered, truthfully; and indeed
she hadn’t; for his answer, after all, amounted merely to this: that if he
thought the play likely to prove a success, he would generously permit the
rich American to indemnify him beforehand against the off-chance of a
failure. In other words, if it turned out well, he stood to win all; while if it
turned out ill, it was Rue who stood to lose whatever was lost upon it.
Nevertheless, after a few more preliminary arrangements, Rue drove
off, not ill-satisfied with her partial success, leaving behind her many
injunctions of profoundest secrecy with the blandly-smiling manager. As
she disappeared down the road, Mr Blades chuckled inwardly. Was he likely
to tell any one else in the world, indeed, that he had even entertained so
unequal a bargain? He would keep to himself his own clever compact with
the American heiress. But two days later, Rue’s heart was made glad, when
she came down to breakfast, by a letter from the manager, couched in
politest terms, informing her that he had read Mr Deverill’s manuscript; that
he thought on the whole there was possibly money in it; and that he would
be pleased to talk over the question of its production on the basis of the
arrangement she had herself proposed at their recent interview. Rue read it,
overjoyed. In the innocence of her heart, she agreed to promise whatever
the astute Mr Blades demanded. Moreover, this being a strictly confidential

matter, she couldn’t even submit it to her lawyer for advice; she was
obliged to act for once on her own initiative. She longed to rush off the very
moment it was settled and tell Will the good news; but prudence and
womanly reserve prevented her. However, she had her reward none the less
next day, when Will hurried round immediately after breakfast to announce
the splendid tidings which had come by that morning’s post, that Blades had
accepted “Honeysuckle,” without any reserve, and intended to put it in
rehearsal forthwith at the Duke of Edinburgh’s. His face beamed with
delight; Rue smiled contentment. She was pleased he should burst in upon
her first of all the world in London with news of his good fortune; that
really looked as if he rather liked her! And then, how sweet it was to feel
she had managed it all herself, and he didn’t know it. It was such a
delightful secret that, womanlike, she longed to tell it to him outright⁠—⁠only
that, of course, to divulge it would be to spoil the whole point of it. So she
merely smiled a tranquil smile, to her own proud heart, and felt as happy as
a queen about it. ’Tis delicious to do something for the man you love, and
to know he doesn’t even suspect you of doing it. . . . Some day, perhaps, she
would be able to tell him. But not till he’d made a great name for himself.
Then she might say to him with pride, at some tender moment, “Before the
world found you out, Will, I knew what you were, and, all unknown to
yourself, it was I who stretched out the first helping hand to your fortunes!”

CHAPTER XXIII

A PROPHET INDEED!

While Will Deverill’s operetta was still in rehearsal at the Duke of
Edinburgh’s, a little episode occurred at Rue’s house in Hans Place, which
was not without a certain weird influence of its own on the after-life of
herself and her companions.
Rue gave an At Home one night early in March, to which Florian and
Will Deverill were invited. Will brought his sister with him⁠—⁠the sister who
was married to an East End curate, and who had called upon Rue at her
brother’s bidding.
“Well, what do you think of her to-night, Maud?” Will asked a little
anxiously as they stood alone for a minute or two in the middle of the
evening.
Mrs Sartoris curled her lip. “Oh, she’s pretty enough,” she answered;
“pretty enough, after her fashion. I could see that the first time; and she’s
got nice manners. She lights up well, too; women of her age always do light
up well. They look better by night, even in the searching glare of these
electric lamps, than in full broad sunshine. But, of course, she hasn’t got
quite the tone of our set; you couldn’t expect it. A faded air of drapery
clings about her to the end. That’s the way with these people; they may be
ever so rich, they may be ever so fascinating⁠—⁠but a discriminating nose
still scents trade in them somewhere.”
Will smiled a quiet smile of suppressed amusement. He didn’t care to
answer her. Rue’s father, he knew, had been an episcopal clergyman in New
York, and she herself, though she married a dry-goodsman, had been every
bit as well brought up as Will and his sister. But ’tis a sisterly way to say
these disparaging things about women whom one’s brother might be
suspected of marrying. Will didn’t mean to marry Rue, it is true; but Maud
thought he might; and that idea alone was more than enough to give a
caustic tone to her critical comments.
The feature of the evening, it seemed, was to be a peculiar séance of a
new American phenomenon, who had come over to Europe with a
wonderful reputation for thought-reading, hypnotism, and what he was
pleased to style “magnetic influences.” Like most of her countrymen and
countrywomen, Rue had a sneaking regard, in the background of her soul,
for mesmerism, spiritualism, psychic force, electro-biology, and the occult
and mysterious in human nature generally. She was one of those

impressionable women, in short, who fall a ready prey to plausible
impostors with voluble talk about ethereal vibrations, telepathic energy, the
odic fluid, and the rest of such rubbish, unless strong-minded male friends
intervene to prevent them. The medium on this occasion, it appeared, was
one Joaquin Holmes, otherwise known as the Colorado Seer, who professed
to read the inmost thoughts of man or woman by direct brainwaves, without
contact of any sort. The guests that night had been specially invited to meet
Mr Holmes on this his first appearance at a séance in London; so about ten
o’clock, all the world trooped down to the dining-room, which Florian had
cunningly arranged as a temporary lecture-hall, with seats in long rows, and
an elevated platform at one end for the medium.
“What an odd-looking man!” Mrs Sartoris exclaimed, as the Colorado
Seer, in full evening dress, bowed a graceful bow from his place on the
platform. “He’s handsome, though, isn’t he? Such wonderful eyes! Just
look! And such a Spanish complexion!”
“A Hidalgo, every inch!” Florian assented gravely, nodding his head,
and looking at him as he would have looked at a Velasquez. “That olive-
brown skin points back straight to Andalusia. It doesn’t want his name to
tell one at a glance that if his father was an American of English descent,
his mother’s folk must have emigrated from Cordova or Granada. I see a
Moslem tinge in cheek and eye; those dusky thin fingers are the Moor all
over!”
“For Moor, read blackamoor,” Colonel Quackenboss, the military
attaché to the American Legation, murmured half under his breath to his
next-door neighbour.
And they were each of them right, in his own way and fashion. The
Colorado Seer was a very handsome man, somewhat swarthier than is usual
with pure-blooded Europeans. His eyes were large and dark and brilliant;
his abundant black hair fell loose over his brow with a graceful southern
curl; a heavy moustache fringed his upper lip; he looked to the
unsophisticated European eye like a pleasing cross between Buffalo Bill
and a Castilian poet. But his Christian name of Joaquin and his southern
skin had descended to him, not from Andalusian Hidalgos, but from a
mother who was partly Spanish and partly negress, with a delicate under-
current of Red Indian ancestry. As he stood there on the platform, however,
in his becoming evening dress, and flooded them with the light of his
lustrous dark eyes⁠—⁠’twas a trick of the trade he had learned in

Colorado⁠—⁠every woman in the room felt instinctively to herself he was a
superb creature, while every man admitted with a grudging smile that the
fellow had at least the outward air of a gentleman.
The Seer, stepping forward with a genial smile, entertained them at first
with some common little tricks of so-called thought-reading, familiar
enough to all those who have ever attempted to watch the ways of that
simple exhibition. He found pins concealed in ladies’ skirts, and guessed the
numbers of bank-notes in financiers’ pockets. Florian’s mouth curled
incredulity; why, these were just the same futile old games as ever, the well-
known and innocent little conjuring dodges of the Bishops and the Stuart
Cumberlands! But after awhile, Mr Joaquin Holmes, waking up all at once,
proceeded to try something newer and more original. A pack of cards was
produced. To avoid all suspicion of collusion or trickery, ’twas a brand-new
pack⁠—⁠observe, there’s no deception⁠—⁠bought by Rue herself that afternoon
in Bond Street. With much air of serious mystery, the Colorado Seer pulled
off the stamped cover before their very eyes, gave the cards themselves to
Will to shuffle, and then proceeded to offer them to every member of the
company one by one in order. Each drew a card, looked at it, and replaced it
in the pack. Instantly, the Seer in a very loud voice, without one moment’s
hesitation, announced it correctly as ten of spades, ace of clubs, five of
hearts, or queen of diamonds. It was an excellent trick, and the performer
could do it equally well with open eyes or blindfolded; he could offer the
cards behind his back, after the pack had been shuffled and handed him
unseen; he could even succeed in the dark, he said, if the lights were
lowered, and each person in the company took his own card out to inspect it
in the passage.
“That looks like genuine thought-reading,” Will was compelled to
admit, thinking it over in his own mind; “but perhaps he forces his cards.
One knows conjurers can do such wonderful things in the way of forcing.”
Instantly the Seer turned upon him with an air of injured innocence. “If
you think there’s any conjuring about this performance,” he exclaimed, with
much dignity, drawing himself up to his full height of six feet two, “you can
offer them yourself, and allow each lady and gentleman in the room to pick
as they choose for themselves among them. I’ll take each card, blindfold, as
fast as they pick, hold it up behind my back, with my hands tied, without
seeing it myself, and read off for you what it is by direct thought-
transference.”

Will accepted the test⁠—⁠a fairly severe one; and, sure enough, the Seer
was right. Carefully blindfolded with one of those moulded wraps, invented
for the purpose, which prevent all possibility of looking down through the
chinks, he yet took each card behind his back in one hand, held it up before
their eyes without moving his head, and gave out its name distinctly and
instantly. The audience was impressed. There was a touch of magic in it.
But the Seer smiled blandly.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” he murmured aloud, with a deprecating little
laugh; “a mere matter of choosing between fifty-two alternatives⁠—⁠which,
after all, is easy. With Mrs Palmer’s consent,” and he turned in a gracefully
deferential attitude to Rue, “I can show you something a great deal more
remarkable. Here are pencils and papers. Each lady or gentleman will
please take a sheet as I hand them round. Write anything you like, in
English, French, German or Spanish, on the piece of paper. Then fold it up,
so, and put it into one of these envelopes gummed down and fastened. After
that, as this experiment requires very great concentration of thought”⁠—⁠he
knitted his brows, and assumed an expression of the intensest internal
effort⁠—⁠“with Mrs Palmer’s kind leave, we will turn out the electric light,
which confuses and distracts one by revealing to the eye so many
surrounding visible objects. And then, without breaking the envelopes in
which you have enclosed the pieces of paper, I will read out to you, in the
dark, what each of you has written.”
He spoke deliberately, with slow western American distinctness, though
with a pleasing accent. That accent, superimposed on his native negro
dialect, had cost him no small effort. The guests, half-incredulous, took the
sheets of paper he distributed to them one by one, and wrote down a
sentence or two, according to taste, after a little interval of whispered
consultation. Then, by the Seer’s direction, they folded the slips in two and
placed them in their envelopes, each bearing outside the name of the person
who wrote it. Florian collected the papers, all carefully gummed down, and
handed them to the Seer, who stood ready to receive them at his place on
the platform. Without one moment’s delay, the lights were turned out. It was
the instantaneousness, indeed, and the utter absence of the usual hocus-
pocus, that distinguished Mr Joaquin Holmes’s unique performance from
the ordinary style of spiritualist conjuring. In a second, the Seer’s voice
rang out clear from his place: “First envelope, Mrs Palmer, containing
inscription in French⁠—⁠very prettily written:

‘La vie est brève:
Un peu d’amour,
Un peu de rêve,
Et puis⁠—⁠bonjour.

La vie est vaine:
Un peu d’espoir,
Un peu de haine,
Et puis⁠—⁠bonsoir.’

“Extremely graceful verses; I don’t know the author. However, no
matter! . . . Second envelope, Colonel Marchmont, containing inscription in
English, ‘The general immediately ordered an advance, and the gallant 21st,
regardless of danger, charged for the battery in magnificent style, sabring
the enemy’s gunners in a wild outburst of military enthusiasm.’ Very
characteristic! A most soldierly choice. And boldly written. . . . Third
envelope, Mrs Sartoris,⁠—⁠stop, please! the lady’s thoughts are wandering;
kindly fix your attention for a moment, Madam, on the words you have
given me. Ah, so; that’s better.⁠—⁠‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day;
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea; The ploughman homeward
wends’⁠—⁠wends? wends? it should have been ‘plods’; but ‘wends’ is what
you thought⁠—⁠‘The ploughman homeward wends his weary way, And
leaves the world to darkness and to me.’ Very appropriate; it’s dark enough
here! And I am the only speaker. Bend your minds to what you have
written, please, or I may have to hesitate. Each think of your own. . . .
Fourth envelope, Mr Florian Wood, containing inscription:

‘We struggle fain to enlarge
Our bounded physical recipiency,
Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life,
Repair the waste of age and sickness: no,
It skills not! life’s inadequate to joy,
As the soul sees joy, tempting life to take.’

An exceedingly appropriate quotation! I forget where it comes from. Try to
concentrate your mind, Mr Wood. Ah, now I know!⁠—⁠from Browning’s
Cleon.”

Florian’s mellifluous voice broke the silence in the auditory. “This is
wonderful!” he said, in his impressive tone, “most wonderful! miraculous! I
never heard anything in my life to equal it.”
The Seer, noting his advantage, didn’t pause for a moment to answer the
interruption, but, smiling a self-satisfied though invisible smile, which
could be heard in his voice in spite of the dense darkness, went on still more
rapidly, “Fifth envelope, Lady Martindale, a familiar quotation, ‘A thing of
beauty is a joy for ever.’ Somewhat hackneyed that, but easy enough to read
on her brain for that very reason. . . . Sixth envelope, Sir Henry
Martindale⁠—⁠I regret to say, a confirmed sceptic; Sir Henry didn’t believe I
could read his thoughts, so he wrote down these rude words: ‘The
performance is a sham, and the man’s a humbug.’ But the performance is
not a sham, and the man’s a thought-reader. Sir Henry also wrote three
words below in the Russian character, which he learnt in the Crimea. Now, I
don’t know Russian, and I can’t pretend to read thoughts in languages I
don’t understand, any more than I could pretend to repeat a conversation I
happened to overhear on top of an omnibus in Japanese or Hottentot. But I
can tell Sir Henry what he thought in English as he wrote those words; he
thought to himself, ‘That’s a puzzler for him, that is; I’ll bet five quid that’ll
beat the fellow.’ ”
The audience laughed at this unexpected sally. Sir Henry felt
uncomfortable. But the Seer, unabashed, went on as before, without an
instant’s pause, to the succeeding envelopes. He ran through them all in the
same rapid manner, till he reached the last, “Miss Violet Farrar,⁠—⁠kindly
concentrate your thoughts on the subject, Señorita,⁠—⁠Miss Farrar wrote a
couple of lines from Swinburne:

‘Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
But the world shall end when I forget.’

That’s the last I received!” He drew a deep sigh. Then without one instant
interposed, “Turn up the lights, please,” he said. “To show all’s fair, I’ll
return you your envelopes.”
Will turned the light on again in a turmoil of surprise. He had never
before seen anything that looked so like a genuine miracle. There stood the
Seer, erect and smiling, with all the envelopes in a huddled heap on the little
round table on the platform beside him. With a quiet air of triumph, he

stepped down to the floor, and reading out the names as he walked along the
rows, replaced in each outstretched hand⁠—⁠its own envelope, unopened. The
visitors tore the covers off before his eyes, and found inside⁠—⁠their own
manuscript, exactly as they had written it. It was a most convincing trick,
and the Colorado Seer had good cause to be proud of the astounded way in
which his company received it.
A buzz of voices ran humming round the room for some minutes
together as the Seer concluded. Everybody hazarded some conjecture of his
own, more or less inept, as to how the man did it. The younger ladies were
mostly of opinion that he “must have a confederate”⁠—⁠though how a
confederate could help him with this particular trick, they didn’t deign to
explain, not having, indeed, any clear picture of their own in their sapient
heads as to the nature of the confederacy. They merely threw out the hint in
the self-same expansive and generous spirit in which they are wont to opine
that “it’s done by electricity,” or, that “the thing has springs in it.” Mr
Arthur Sartoris, the East End curate, and two old maids with amiable
profiles in a back row, were inclined to set it down to “cerebral undulations
in the ethereal medium”⁠—⁠which, of course, would be competent to explain
almost anything, if they only existed. Lady Martindale leaned rather
towards the extremer view that “the man had dealings with a familiar
spirit,” and objected to take any further part in such doubtful proceedings.
Sir Henry, while not venturing to offer any direct explanation, was yet
reminded at once of some very remarkable and surprising feats he had seen
performed by a fakir in India, who had told him the name of his future wife,
made a mango-tree grow and bear fruit before his eyes, and sent a boy to
climb up a loose end of twine till he disappeared in space, whence he was
precipitated in fragments a few minutes later, to get up and walk away one
moment afterwards, at the first touch of the fakir’s wand, as cool and
unconcerned as if nothing had happened. Everybody had a theory which
satisfied himself; and every theory alike seemed pure bosh to Will Deverill.
To everybody’s surprise, however, Florian’s melodious voice, after that
one interruption, took no further part in the brisk discussion. The world
rather expected that Florian would intervene with some abstruse hypothesis
of telepathic action, or enlarge on the occult influence of soul upon soul,
without the need for any gross and palpable link of material connection. But
Florian held his peace. He had an idea of his own, and he wasn’t going to
impart it for nothing to anybody. Only once did he speak. “The man has

eyes in the back of his head,” a lady had cried after one trick in profound
astonishment.
“Say, rather, the man has eyes in the tips of his fingers,” Florian
corrected gravely. For he was no fool, Florian.
The Seer heard him, and darted a strange glance at his face. This man
Wood was too clever. The Seer must square him!
The evening wore away, and conjecture died down. The Seer mixed
with the throng in his private capacity, told good stories to the men with a
strong Western flavour, said pretty things to the women with Parisian grace,
and flashed his expressive eyes into theirs to point them. Everybody
allowed he was a most agreeable man, and everybody thought his
performance “simply marvellous.”
Florian waited on the door-step as the Seer was leaving. “I’ll walk home
with you,” he said, with an air of quiet determination.
The Seer stared at him hard. “As you like,” he answered, coldly; but it
was clear from his tone he distrusted Florian.
They walked round the corner for some yards in silence. Then Florian
spoke first. “There was only one thing I didn’t quite understand,” he began,
with a confidential air, “and that was how the dickens you managed to get
those gummed envelopes open.”
The Seer stood still for a second, and fronted him. They were in a lonely
street. “Now, you look here, Mr Florian Wood,” the American said quietly,
dropping back all at once into his native dialect and his native accent, “you
lay low this evening. You thought you spotted it. I saw you lay low, and I
knew pretty well you meant to come round and have it out some time with
me. Well, sir, what do you mean by insinuating to a gentleman like me that I
broke those there envelopes? That’s an imputation on my honesty and
honour; and out West, you know, we answer questions like that only one
way . . . with a six-shooter.”
He spoke with the menacing air of an angry bully. But Florian wasn’t
exactly the sort of man to be bullied; small as he was, he did not lack for
courage. If Mr Joaquin Holmes was tall and big-built, why, Florian was
backed up by all the strength of the police of London. The Englishman
smiled. “Yes, you do, out West, I know,” he answered, calmly; “but in
London, that style’s very much out of fashion. We keep a police force on
purpose to prevent it. Now, don’t let’s be two fools. I lay low, as you say. If
you want me to go on lying low in future, you’ll answer me sensibly, like a

man of the world, and trust my honour. If you want me to expose you,
you’ll tell lies and bluster. You’ve had twenty pounds down from my friend
Mrs Palmer for this evening’s entertainment. That’s first-rate pay. You can’t
earn it again, if your system’s blown upon.”
The Coloradan darted a furtive side-glance at Florian. This sleek-faced,
innocent-looking, high-flown little Englishman was more dangerous, after
all, than the Westerner imagined. But he blustered still for a while about his
honour and his honesty; he was ashamed to throw up the sponge so easily.
Florian listened, unmoved. All this talk fell flat upon him. At last, when the
Seer had exhausted his whole stock of available indignation, Florian
interposed once more, bland and suave as ever: “It’s a very good trick,” the
small man said, smiling, “and I don’t know how you managed that part
about the envelopes. . . . Besides, I never met such delicacy of touch in my
life before⁠—⁠in a sighted person!”
At that word, Joaquin Holmes gave a perceptible start. He saw its
implications. It is the term which the blind in asylums or the like invariably
apply to the outside world with normal vision.
Florian noticed the little start, all involuntary as it was; and the Seer in
turn observed that he noticed it. No man can play the thought-reading or
spiritualist game unless endowed with exceptional quickness of perception.
“How did you know I’d ever been blind?” he asked, quickly, taken
aback for a moment, and making just that once an unguarded admission.
“I didn’t know it,” Florian answered, with equal frankness. “I didn’t
even guess it. But I saw at once you’d at least been bred and brought up
among the blind. My own grandfather was blind, you see, and my uncle as
well; and I’ve inherited from them, myself, some germs of the same faculty.
But you’ve got it stronger than anyone I ever saw in my life till now. . . .
Besides, I want to know how you managed those envelopes. I hate being
baffled. When I see a good trick, I like to understand it. Remember, I have
influence in the press and in Society. I can serve your purpose. But I make it
the price of my lying low in future that you tell me the way you managed
about the envelopes.”
The Seer seized his arm. “You’re a durned smart chap,” he said, with
genuine admiration. “Nobody, even in America, ever guessed that trick; and
we’re smarter out there, I reckon, than the run of the old country. Come
along to my rooms, and we’ll talk this thing over.”

“No thank you,” Florian answered, with a quiet little smile. “My friends
wouldn’t know where I’d gone to-night. Your hint about six-shooters is
quite too pregnant. But if you care to come home to my humble chambers
in Grosvenor Gardens, and make terms of surrender, we can see this thing
out over a whiskey and soda.”

CHAPTER XXIV

THE ART OF PROPHESYING

They walked on, side by side, to the house in Grosvenor Gardens. Florian
let himself in with a latch-key, and rang the bell for his servant. While he
waited, he wrote a name on the back of a card, carelessly. “Look here,
Barnes,” the butterfly of Society said, as his eminently respectable man-of-
all-work entered; “this is Mr Joaquin Holmes,”⁠—⁠and he handed him the
card⁠—⁠“you can read the name there. He comes from America. I particularly
desire you to remark Mr Joaquin Holmes’s appearance and features. You
may be called upon to identify him.” Then he turned with his bland smile to
the discomfited Seer, and observed, in that unfailingly honeyed voice of his,
“You must excuse me, Mr Holmes, but as a gentleman from out West,
addicted to the frequent use of the six-shooter, I’m sure you’ll appreciate
the delicacy of my motives for this little precaution. You can go now,
Barnes. A mere matter of form, so that, in case your evidence should be
needed in court, you’ll be able to swear to Mr Holmes’s identity, and give
evidence that he was here, in my company, this evening.”
Barnes glanced at the card, and retired to the door, discreetly. The Seer
flung himself down in an easy-chair with true Western sangfroid. He knew
he was detected; but he wasn’t going to give up the game so soon, without
seeing how much Florian really understood of his secret and his methods.
Meanwhile, Florian produced a couple of pretty little old-fashioned
stoneware jugs and some Venetian glasses from a dainty corner cupboard. A
siphon stood on a Moorish tray at his side by the carved Bombay black-
wood fireplace. “Caledonian or Hibernian?” Florian asked, turning to his
visitor, with his most charming smile⁠—⁠“I mean, Scotch or Irish?”
“Thanks, Scotch,” the Coloradan answered, relaxing his muscles a little,
as he began to enter into the spirit of his entertainer’s humour.
Florian poured it out gracefully, and touched the knob of the siphon.
Then he handed it, foaming, still bland as ever, to the hesitating American.
“Now, let’s be frank with one another, Mr Holmes,” he said, with cheerful
promptitude. “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re a very smart man, and I
admire your smartness. I lay low to-night, as you justly observed, and I’m
game to lie low⁠—⁠if you’ll take my terms⁠—⁠in future. I’m not going to blow
upon you, and I’m not going to stand in the way of your success in life; but
I just want to know⁠—⁠how did you manage those envelopes?”

“If you think it’s a trick, why, the envelopes would be a long chalk the
easiest part of it,” the Seer responded, with a dry little cough. “The real
difficulty, of course, would be to read in the dark what folks had written.
And that’s the part, I claim, that I do myself by pure force of thought⁠—⁠in
short, by psychic transference.”
He stared hard at his host. Their eyes met searchingly. It was seldom
that Florian did a vulgar or ungraceful thing; but, as Mr Joaquin Holmes
uttered those high-sounding words, and looked him straight in the face with
great solemnity, Florian gravely winked at him. Then he raised that
priceless Venetian glass goblet to his curling lips, took a long pull at the
whiskey without speaking a word, and went over to a desk by the big front
window. From it he took out a pack of cards, and returned with them in his
hand. “Shuffle them,” he said, briefly, to the uneasy Seer, in his own very
tone. And the American shuffled them.
Florian picked one out at random, and held it before him, face down, for
some seconds in silence. “Now, I can’t do this trick like you,” he said, in a
very business-like voice; “but I can do it a little. Only, I’m obliged to feel
the card all over with my fingers like this; and I’m often not right as to the
names of the suits, though I can generally make a good shot at the pips and
numbers. This is a three that I’ve drawn⁠—⁠I think, the three of spades; but it
may be clubs⁠—⁠I don’t feel quite certain.”
He turned it up. Sure enough, it was a three, but of clubs not spades.
“I’ll try another,” he said, unabashed. And he drew one and felt it.
“This is a nine of diamonds,” he continued, more confidently, after a
moment’s pause. The American took it from him, without turning up its
face, drew his forefinger almost imperceptibly over the unexposed side, and
answered without hesitation, “Yes; you’re right⁠—⁠that’s it⁠—⁠the nine of
diamonds.”
Florian pulled out a third, and felt it again carefully with the tips of his
fingers. “It’s a picture card this time,” he went on: “King, Queen, or Knave
of Hearts, I’m not sure which. I’m no good at picture cards. They’re all a
blur to me. I can tell them only by the single pips in the corners.”
The Seer took it from him, hardly touching it perceptibly. “That’s not a
heart!” he answered in a sharp voice, without a second’s hesitation; “that’s
the Jack of Spades! You’re right as to the general shape, but you’ve
neglected the handle.”

He turned it up as he spoke. The Knave of Spades indeed it was. Florian
corrected him solemnly.
“In good English society,” he murmured, still polite and still inscrutable,
“we say Knave, not Jack. Remember that in future. To call it a Jack’s an
odious vulgarism. I merely mention this fact because I notice how cleverly
you’ve managed to acquire the exact little tricks of accent and manner
which are sure to take with an English audience. I should be sorry to think a
man of your brains, and a man of your moral character⁠—⁠positive or
negative⁠—⁠should be thought the less of in this town of London for so very
unimportant a matter of detail.”
“Thank you,” the Seer responded quietly, with another searching look.
“I believe, Mr Florian Wood, we two understand each other. But mind
you”⁠—⁠and he looked very wise and cunning⁠—⁠“I didn’t pass my finger over
the cards at Mrs Palmer’s.”
“So I saw,” Florian replied, with unabated good-humour. “But I looked
at them close⁠—⁠and I noticed they were squeezers. What’s more, I observed
you took them always by the left-hand corner (which was the right hand,
upside down) whenever they were passed to you. That gave me the clue. I
saw you could read, with one touch of your finger, the number and suit
marked small in the corner. I recognised how you did it, though I couldn’t
come near it myself. Your sense of touch must be something simply
exquisite.”
The American’s mouth curled gently at the corners. Those words
restored his confidence. He took up a casual book from the table at his
side⁠—⁠’twas the first edition of Andrew Lang’s “Ballades in Blue
China”⁠—⁠for Florian, as a man of taste, adored first editions. “Look here,”
the Seer said, carelessly. He turned it face downwards and opened it at
random. Then, passing one finger almost imperceptibly over the face of a
page, he began to read, as fast as the human voice can go, the very first
verses he chanced to light upon.

“Ballade of Primitive Man.”
“He lived in a cave by the seas;
He lived upon oysters and foes;
But his list of forbidden degrees
An extensive morality shews.
Geological evidence goes
To prove he had never a pan,
But he shaved with a shell when he chose.
’Twas the manner of Primitive Man.”

He read it like print. Florian leaned back in his chair, clasped his dainty
hands on his small breast before him, and stared at the Seer in unaffected
astonishment. “I knew you did it that way,” he said, after a pause, nodding
his head once or twice; “I felt sure that was the trick of it; but now I see you
do it, why, it’s more wonderful, almost, than if it were nothing more than a
mere ordinary miracle. Miracles are cheap; but sleight of hand like
this⁠—⁠well, it’s priceless, priceless!”
“Now, you’re a man of honour,” the Seer said, leaning forward
anxiously. “You’ve found me out, fair and square, and I don’t deny it. But
you’re not going to round on me and spoil my business, are you? It’s taken
me years and years to work up this sense by constant practice; and if I
thought you were going to cut in right now, and peach upon me⁠—⁠why,
hanged if I don’t think, witness or no witness, I’d settle this thing still,
straight off, with a six-shooter. Yes, sir⁠—⁠r⁠—⁠r, I’d settle it straight off, I
would, and let ’em scrag me if they would for it!”
Florian stirred the fire languidly with a contemplative poker (a poker’s a
very good weapon to fall back upon, one knows, in case of necessity).
“That’d be a pity,” he drawled out calmly, in an unconcerned voice. “I
wouldn’t like you to make such a nasty mess on my Damascus carpet. This
is a real old Damascus, observe, and I paid fifty guineas for it. It’s a nice
one, isn’t it? Good colour, good pattern! Besides, as you say, I’m a man of
honour. And I’ve a fellow-feeling, too⁠—⁠being clever myself⁠—⁠for all other
clever fellows. I’ve promised you not to peach, if only you’ll tell me how
you managed those envelopes. That’s a mere bit of ordinary everyday
conjuring; it’s nothing to the skill and practice required to read, as you do,
with the tips of your fingers.”

The Seer drew a long breath, and passed his dark hand wearily across
his high brown forehead.
“That’s so!” he answered, with a sigh. “You may well say that.” Then he
dropped spontaneously into his own Western manner. “See here, stranger,”
he said, eyeing Florian hard, and laying one heavy hand on his entertainer’s
arm; “it’s bred in the bone with me to some extent; but all the same, it’s cost
me fifteen years of practice to develop it. I come of a blind family, I do;
father was blind, and mother as well; made their match up at the Indiana
State Asylum. Grandfather was blind in mother’s family, and two aunts in
father’s. I was born sighted; but at five year old I was taken with the
cataract. They weren’t any great shakes at the cataract in Colorado where I
was raised; I was fifteen year old before they tried to couch it. So I learned
to read first with embossed print on Grandfather’s old blind Boston Bible. I
learned to read first-rate; that was as easy as A.B.C., for the tips of my
fingers were always sensitive. I learnt to make mats a bit, too, and to weave
in colours. Weaving in colours develops the sensitiveness of the nerves in
the hand; you get to distinguish the different strands by the feel, and to
know whereabouts you’re up to in the pattern.”
“And at fifteen you recovered your sight?” Florian murmured
reflectively, still grasping the poker.
“Yes, sir⁠—⁠r⁠—⁠r; at fifteen they took me to New York and got my eyes
couched there. As soon as ever I could see, I began to learn more things still
with the tips of my fingers; my eyes sort of helped me to interpret what I
felt with them. Pretty soon I saw there was money in this thing. People in
Colorado didn’t care to play poker with me; they found out I’d a wonderful
notion what was printed on a card by just drawing my finger, like this, over
the face of it. I see you’re a straight man, and haven’t got many prejudices;
so I don’t mind telling you now my first idea was to go in for handling the
cards as a profession. However, I soon caught on that that wasn’t a good
game; people in our section observed how I worked it, and it was apt to lead
in the end to bowies and other unpleasantness. Several unpleasantnesses
occurred, in fact, in Denver City, before I retired from that branch of the
business. So then I began to reflect this thought-reading trick would come
in more handy; one might do a bit at the cards now and again for a change;
but if one tried it too often, it might land one at last in free quarters at the
public expense; and the thought-reading’s safer and more gentlemanly any
way. So I worked at learning to read, as time afforded, till I could read a

printed book as easy with my fingers as I could read it with my eyes. It took
me ten years, I guess, to bring that trick to perfection.”
“You made us write with a pencil, I noticed,” Florian interposed, with a
knowing smile. “That’s easier to read, of course, for a pencil digs in so.”
The Seer regarded him with no small admiration. “You’re a smart man,
and no mistake, sir,” he answered, emphatically. “That’s just how I do it. I
read it from the back, where it’s raised into furrows, in relief as it were, by
the digging-in; I read it backwards. I gave ’em each a pad with the paper,
you may have noticed. That pad supplies just the right amount of resistance.
I had to stop once or twice to-night, where I couldn’t read a sentence, and
fill in the space meanwhile with a little bit of patter about concentrating
their thoughts upon it, and that sort of nonsense. Mrs Sartoris’s hand was
precious hard to decipher, and there was one young lady who pressed so
light, she almost licked me.”
“And the envelopes?” Florian asked once more.
The Seer smiled disdainfully. “Why, that’s nothing,” he answered, with
a contemptuous curl of the lip. “Any fool could do that; it’s as easy as lying.
The lower side-flap of the envelopes is hardly fastened at all, with just a
pin’s head of gum,”⁠—⁠he drew one from his pocket⁠—⁠“See here,” he said;
“it’s got a bit left dry to wet and fasten afterwards. I draw out the paper, so,
and read it with my finger; then I push it back, gum down again, and pull
out the next one. It’s the rapidity that tells, and it’s that that takes so many
years of practice.”
“But Browning’s Cleon?” Florian exclaimed. “And Sir Henry
Martindale’s having learnt the Russian character in the Crimea? He told me
it was there he picked it up himself. How on earth did you get at those,
now?”
The Seer stretched out his legs with a self-satisfied smirk, and took a
pull at his whiskey. “See here, my dear sir,” he said, stroking his smooth
chin placidly; “a man don’t succeed in these walks of life unless he’s got
some nous in him to start with. He’s bound to observe, and remember, and
infer, a good deal; he’s bound to have an eye for character, and be a reader
of faces. Now, it happens you wrote those self-same lines in Mrs Palmer’s
album; and I chanced to read them there while I waited for her in the
drawing-room this very morning. A man’s got to be smart, you bet, and look
out for coincidences, if he’s going to do much in occult science to astonish
the public. Well, I’ve noticed every one has certain pet quotations of his

own, which he uses frequently; and you’d be surprised to find how often the
same quotation turns up, time after time, in these psychical experiments.
‘The curfew tolls the knell,’ or, ‘Not a drum was heard,’ are pretty sure to be
given six times out of seven that one holds a séance. But yours was a new
one; so I learnt it by heart, and observed you set it down to Browning’s
Cleon. As for the Russian character⁠—⁠well, where was an English officer
likely to learn it except in the Crimea? That was risky, of course; I might
have been mistaken; but one bad shot don’t count against you, while a good
one carries conviction straight off to the mind of your subject.”
Florian paused, and considered. Before the end of the evening, indeed,
he had learnt a good many things about the trade of prophet; and Mr
Joaquin Holmes had taken, incidentally, every drop as much whiskey as
was good for his constitution. When at last he rose to go, he clasped
Florian’s delicate hand hard. “You’re a straight man, I believe, stranger,” he
said, significantly, “and I’m sure you’re a smart one. But mind this from
me, Mr Florian Wood, if ever you round on me, Colorado or London, the
six-shooter’ll settle it.”
Florian smiled, and pressed his hand. “I don’t care that for your six-
shooter,” he answered, calmly, with a resonant snap of his tiny left
forefinger. “But I don’t want to spoil a man’s prospects in life, when he’s
taken fifteen years to make a consummate rogue of himself. You’re perfect
in your way, Mr Holmes, and I adore perfection. If ever I breathe a single
word of this to my dearest friend⁠—⁠well, I give you free leave to whip out
that six-shooter you’re so fond of bragging about.”

CHAPTER XXV

A DRAMATIC VENTURE

Among the minor successes of that London season, all the world reckoned
the Colorado Seer’s Psycho-physical Entertainment at the Assyrian Hall in
Bond Street, and Will Deverill’s dainty operetta, “Honeysuckle,” at the
Duke of Edinburgh’s Theatre in Long Acre. The Seer, indeed, had been well
advertised beforehand by the Morning Post and other London dailies, which
gave puffs preliminary of his marvellous performance, “as privately
exhibited to a select audience at Mrs Palmer’s charming and hospitable
residence in Hans Place, Chelsea.” A well-known society writer, with a
lingering love of the occult and the supernatural, saw in Mr Joaquin
Holmes’s abstruse gifts “a genuine case of Second Sight, and a curious
modern parallel to the most famous feats of the Delphic oracle and the
Indian Yogis.” The Spectator suggested in a learned article that “Mahatmas
were about”; the Daily News averred that “Nothing like Mr Holmes’s
extraordinary powers had been seen on earth since the Egyptian magicians
impiously counterfeited the miracles of Moses and Aaron before the throne
of Pharaoh.” Every one of the accounts particularly insisted on the presence
at the first trial of Mr Florian Wood, the distinguished musical and dramatic
critic; whose inmost thoughts the Seer had read offhand like an open book,
and whose quotations from little-known and unpopular sources he had
instantly assigned to their proper origin. But when Florian himself was
questioned on the subject, he shook his head with an air of esoteric
knowledge, put two soft white fingers to his delicate lips, and smiled
mysteriously. To say the truth, Florian loved a mystery. It flattered his sense
of personal importance. Nay, he would almost have joined Mr Joaquin
Holmes as a confederate in his little tricks for pure love of mystification,
were it not for a wholesome and restraining dread that others might find
them out as he himself had done. So the Seer, thus well and cheaply
advertised by anticipation, made a hit for the moment, as dozens of such
quacks have done before and since, from Home and Bishop to the Little
Georgia Magnet.
As for Will Deverill’s play, the first night was crowded. All London was
there, in the sense that the Savage, the Garrick, and the Savile give to all
London. Rue had taken tickets for stalls with reckless extravagance, and
bestowed them right and left, as if on the author’s behalf, to every
influential soul among her fine acquaintance. Florian whipped up a fair

number of first-nighters of the literary clique, and not a few great ladies
from Belgravia drawing-rooms. The audience was distinctly and decidedly
favourable. But not all the packed houses that ever were can save a bad
play, if bad it is, from condign damnation. The incorruptible pit and the free
and independent electors of the gallery are no respecters of persons, in their
critical capacity. Fortunately, however, as it happened, Will’s play was a
good one. It didn’t take the audience by storm at the first hearing, but it
pleased and satisfied them. One or two of the melodies had a catchy ring;
one or two of the scenes were both brilliant and pathetic. The house encored
all the principal tunes; and when the curtain fell on virtue triumphant, in the
person of Honeysuckle, vociferous cries arose on every side for “Author!
Author!”
Will sat in a stage box, throughout the whole performance, with Florian,
Rue, his sister, Mrs Sartoris, and her husband, the amiable East End curate.
It was a three-act piece. As far as the end of the second act, Maud Sartoris
was delighted; it was a distinct success, and Rue was very well pleased.
Maud thought that was good; after all, whether she “smelt of drapery” or
not, it’s well for one’s brother to produce a favourable impression on a
woman with a fortune of seven hundred thousand. But the third act, she felt
sure, was distinctly inferior to the two that preceded it. She said as much to
Rue, while Will, trembling with excitement from head to foot, slipped off to
make his expected bow before the curtain.
At those words of hers, Rue turned pale. She had thought so all through,
though she would hardly acknowledge it, even to herself, and she feared in
her own heart she knew the reason. Could Will have written the first two
acts during those happy days when his head was stuffed full of Linnet at
Meran, and gone on with the third in a London lodging after he learned of
her marriage to Andreas Hausberger? Rue more than half-suspected that
obvious explanation⁠—⁠for Honeysuckle was Linnet⁠—⁠and the thought
disquieted her.
“You’re quite right,” Florian interposed, with his airy eloquence. “The
first two acts are good⁠—⁠distinctly good. Will wrote them in the Tyrol. The
third’s a poor thing⁠—⁠mere fluff and feather: oh, what a falling off was
there! It was written in London! But who can sing aright of Arcady in the
mud of Mayfair? Who can sing of Zion by the willows of Babylon? Will
drew his first inspiration from the sparkling air of Meran; it faded like a
mist with the mists of the Channel.”

“The audience doesn’t seem to think so,” Rue put in, somewhat
anxiously, as a hearty round of applause greeted Will by the footlights.
“They feel it’s all right. They’re evidently satisfied, on the whole, with the
nature of the dénoument.”
“If you look at the papers to-morrow morning,” Florian answered,
carelessly, “you’ll find every candid critic disagrees with the audience and
agrees with Mrs Sartoris. But what matter for that! It’s a very good play,
with some very good tunes in it; and the actors have made it. I really didn’t
think our dear friend Will could do anything so good⁠—⁠till I saw it
interpreted. I call the reception, on the whole, most promising.”
Rue felt positively annoyed that Florian should speak so
condescendingly of Will’s beautiful music. He damned it with faint praise,
while Rue herself felt for it a genuine enthusiasm. For she knew it was
good,⁠—⁠all except that third act,⁠—⁠and even there she saw touches of really
fine composition.
In a minute or two more, Will came back to them, radiant. Florian
boarded him at once. “Ten thousand congratulations, dear boy,” he cried,
affectedly. “We’re all delighted. Laurel wreaths for the victor! Bays drape
your lute. Everybody’s been saying the first two acts are a triumphal
progress, though the third, we agree, fails to sustain the attention⁠—⁠flags in
interest somewhat.”
Will coloured up to his eyes. Rue noted the blush; her heart sank at sight
of it. “I knew it was weak myself,” he admitted, a little shamefacedly. “The
inspiration died down. Perhaps it was natural. You see, Maud,” he went on,
turning round to his sister as to a neutral person, and avoiding Rue’s eye, “I
wrote and composed the first two acts at Innsbruck and Meran, under the
immediate influence of the Tyrolese air and the Tyrolese music; they welled
up in me in the midst of peasant songs and cow-bells. The third act, I had to
manufacture at my rooms in Craven Street. Surroundings, of course, make a
deal of difference to this sort of thing. I was in the key there, and out of it in
London. Pumped-up poetry and pumped-up music are poor substitutes after
all for the spontaneous article.”
He didn’t dare to look at Rue as he spoke those words. He was
conscious all the while, let him boggle as he might, that she knew the real
reason for the failure of the dénoument. And he was conscious, too, though
he was a modest man, that Rue would feel hurt at the effect Linnet’s
marriage had had upon his music. As for Rue herself, poor girl, her face was

crimson. To think she should have done so much, and wronged her modesty
so far with Mr Wildon Blades to get Will’s operetta put on the stage that
evening; to think she should have risked her own money to ensure its
success, and then to find it owed its inspiration wholly and solely to the
charms of her peasant rival, Linnet! Rue was more than merely vexed; she
was shamed and humiliated. Will’s triumph was turned for her into gall and
bitterness. His heart, after all, was still fixed on his cow-girl!
They drove home together in Rue’s luxurious brougham to Hans Place,
Chelsea⁠—⁠Mr Sartoris and Florian following close in a hansom. The party
were engaged to sup at Rue’s. Florian had invited them, indeed, to a
banquet at Romano’s, as more strictly in keeping with the evening’s
entertainment; but Maud Sartoris had objected to such a plan as “improper,”
and likely to damage dear Arthur’s prospects. So at Rue’s they supped. But,
in spite of Will’s success, and his health which they drank in Rue’s finest
champagne, with musical honours, the party somehow lacked go and spirit.
Will was dimly conscious in his own soul of having unwittingly behaved
rather ill to Rue; Rue was dimly conscious of harbouring some deep-seated
but indefinite resentment towards Will and Linnet. It was some consolation,
at least, to know that the girl was now decently married and done for;
sooner or later, for certain, such a man as Will Deverill was sure to get over
a mere passing fancy for a handsome up-standing Tyrolese peasant-girl.
After supper, Will Deverill and the Sartorises went home in a party. But
Florian lingered late. This was an excellent opportunity. Rue was annoyed
with Will, and therefore all the more likely to accept another suitor. He
gazed around the room⁠—⁠that little palace of art he had decorated with such
care for his soul to dwell in. “Upon my word, Rue,” he murmured at last,
after some desultory talk, glancing around him complacently, “I’m proud of
this place; I never knew before what a decorator I was. It’s simply
charming.” He gazed at her fixedly. “It’s the sweetest home in all London,”
he went on in a rapt voice, “and it’s inhabited by the sweetest and brightest
creature in the whole of Christendom. I sometimes think, Rue, as I gaze
round this house, how happy I should be⁠—⁠if I too lived in it.”
For a moment, Rue stared at him without quite understanding what he
meant to convey by this singular intimation. Then all at once it flashed
across her. In spite of her distress, a smile stole over her face. She held out
her hand frankly. “Good night, Florian,” she said, in a very decided tone.
“Let me urge upon you to be content with your chambers in Pimlico. You’re

a delightful and always most amusing friend; I hope you’re not going to
make your friendship impossible for me. I like you very much, in your own
sort of way; but if ever you re-open that subject again, . . . I’m afraid I could
give you no further opportunity of admiring your own handicraft in this
pretty little house of mine. That’s why I say good-night to you now so
plainly. It’s best to be plain⁠—⁠best to understand one another, once for all,
and for ever.”
Two minutes later, a dejected creature named Florian Wood found
himself walking disconsolate, with his umbrella up, on the sloppy wet flags
of ill-lighted Sloane Street. He had sustained a loss of seven hundred
thousand pounds on a turn of fortune’s wheel, at an inauspicious moment.
And Rue, with her face in her hands by the fire, was saying to herself with
many tears and sighs that, Linnet or no Linnet, she never would and never
could love anyone in the world except that dear Will Deverill.

CHAPTER XXVI

A WOMAN’S HEART

The papers next morning, with one accord, were almost unanimous in their
praise of Honeysuckle. Will’s operetta didn’t set the Thames on fire, to be
sure⁠—⁠a first work seldom does⁠—⁠but it secured such an amount of modest
success as decided him to change his plans largely for the future. It was
certain, now, that he might take himself seriously as a musical purveyor. So
he began to drop off to some extent from the hack work of journalism, and
devote his energies in earnest to his new task in life as a playwright and
composer. Rue had nothing to pay for her guarantee of Honeysuckle; on the
contrary, Will received a very solid sum for his royalties on the run through
the remainder of that season. He never knew, indeed, how much he had
been indebted to the pretty American’s not wholly disinterested act of
kindness; for Mr Blades kept his word; and, in spite of what he said, Rue’s
timely intervention had decided him not a little in accepting that first piece
by an unknown author.
Thus, during the next few years, as things turned out, Will’s position
and prospects improved very rapidly. He was regarded as one of our most
rising composers; critics spoke of him as the sole representative and restorer
of the serious English poetical opera. Monetary troubles no longer
oppressed his soul; he had leisure to write⁠—⁠and to write, if he would, the
thing that pleased him. His position was secured⁠—⁠so much so, indeed, that
judicious mammas gave him frequent invitations to their gayest At Homes
and garden parties. But he successfully avoided all snares so set for him.
Many people expressed no little surprise that so nice a young man⁠—⁠and a
poet to boot⁠—⁠with a position like his, and such excellent Principles, should
refrain from marriage. Society expects that every man will do his duty; it
intends him to marry as soon as he has means to relieve it becomingly of
one among its many superfluous daughters. But, in spite of Society, Will
still remained single, and met all the casual feelers of interested
acquaintances as to the reasons which induced him so to shirk his duty as a
British citizen with a quiet smile of self-contained resolution.
Rue came to London now for each succeeding season. Will was much at
her house, and a very real friendship existed between them. Busybodies
wondered, indeed, that those two young people, who were so thick together,
didn’t stop scandal’s mouth by marrying as they ought to do. The
busybodies could see no just cause or impediment why they should not at

once be joined together in holy matrimony. The young woman was rich; the
young man was a genius. She was “mad for him,” every one said, in every
one’s usual exaggerated phraseology; and as for him, though perhaps he
wasn’t quite so wildly in love, yet he liked her so well, and was so often in
her company, that it would surely be better to avoid whispers at once by
marrying her offhand, like the earl in the “Bab Ballads,” “quite reg’lar, at St
George’s!” The busybodies were surprised he didn’t see it so himself; it
really was almost somebody’s duty, they thought, to suggest the idea to him.
But perhaps Mrs Palmer’s money was strictly tied up; in which case, of
course⁠—⁠Society broke off short, and shrugged its sapient shoulders.
To some extent, in fact, Will agreed with them himself. He almost
fancied he would have proposed to Rue⁠—⁠if he wasn’t so fond of her. As he
sat with her one evening by the drawing-room fire at Hans Place, before the
lights were turned on, during blind-man’s holiday, he said to her suddenly,
after a long, deep pause, “I daresay, Rue, you sometimes wonder why it is
I’ve never tried to ask you to marry me.”
Rue gave a little start of half-tremulous surprise. He could see how the
colour mounted fast to her cheek by the glow of the firelight. She gave a
faint gasp as she answered candidly, with American frankness, “Well, to tell
you the truth, Will, I’ve fancied once or twice you were just going to do it.”
Will looked across at her kindly. She was very charming. “I won’t be
cruel enough, Rue,” he said, leaning forward to her like a brother, “to ask
you what answer you meant to give, if I’d done as you expected. I hope you
won’t think me conceited if I say I half believe I know it already. And that’s
just why I want to tell you now the reason that has prevented me from ever
asking you. If your nature were a little less deep, and a little less womanly
than it really is, I might have asked you long ago. But, Rue, you know⁠—⁠I
feel sure you know⁠—⁠how deeply I loved that other woman. I love her still,
and I won’t pretend to deny it. I’ve waited and wondered whether in time
her image might fade out of my heart; but it never has faded. She’s another
man’s wife, and probably I shall never see her again; yet I love her as dearly
and regret her as much as I did on the day when I first heard she’d thrown
herself away for life upon Andreas Hausberger.”
“I’ve felt sure you did,” Rue answered, with downcast eyes. “I’ve felt it,
Will⁠—⁠and for that very reason, I’ve wondered all the less you didn’t ask
me.”

Will looked across at her again. She was beautiful as she sat there with
the glow of the fire on her pensive features. “Dear Rue,” he said, softly,
“you and I are no mere children. We know our own minds. We’re grown
man and woman. We can venture to talk freely to one another of these
things, without the foolish, childish nonsense of false shame or false
blushes. In spite of Linnet, I’d have asked you long ago to be my wife⁠—⁠if I
hadn’t respected and admired you so deeply. But I feel you’re not a woman
who could ever put up with half a man’s heart, or half a man’s confidence;
and half my heart is all I could give you. I love Linnet still, and I shall
always love her. I never shall cease to feel an undying regret that I didn’t
marry her, instead of that fellow Hausberger. Now, there are women not a
few I might still have asked to marry me, in spite of that regret; but you’re
not one of them. I love you better than I ever have loved anyone else on this
earth⁠—⁠anyone else, but Linnet; and, therefore, I don’t ask you to marry a
man who could give you a second place only in his affections.”
The tears stood dim in Rue’s swimming eyes. She looked at him
steadily, and let them trickle one by one down her cheeks, unheeded. “Dear
Will,” she answered him back, with equal frankness, “it was kind of you to
speak, and I’m glad you’ve spoken. It’ll make our relations all the easier in
future! I guessed how you felt; I guessed it all long ago; but I’m glad, all the
same, to have heard from your own lips the actual facts of it. And, Will, you
quite rightly interpret my feelings. I’m an American at heart, and, you
know, we Americans are very exacting in matters of affection. Some savage
strain of monopoly exists in us still. I can’t help it. I acknowledge it. I won’t
deny to you”⁠—⁠and she stretched out her hand quite frankly, and let him
hold it in his own for a few brief moments⁠—⁠“I won’t deny that I’m very
very fond indeed of you. If you could have given me your whole heart, I
would have accepted it gratefully. I admired you with a deep admiration
from the very first day I ever met you. I loved you from the time we sat
together on the Lanser Kopf that afternoon at Innsbruck. I’m not ashamed
to tell you so⁠—⁠nay, rather, dear, I’m proud of it; for, Will, you’re a man any
woman might be proud to waste her love upon. But much as I love you,
much as I admire you, I never could accept you if you feel like that. As an
American born, with my monopolist instincts, I must have a whole man to
myself all alone⁠—⁠or I won’t have any of him.”
“I knew it,” Will answered, caressing her hand with his fingers, and
bending over it chivalrously. “And that’s why I never have ventured to ask

you. But I’ve loved you all the same, Rue⁠—⁠as one loves the woman who
stands best of all . . . save one . . . in one’s affections.”
Rue withdrew her hand gently. Her tears were falling faster. “Well,
now,” she said, with a quiet sigh, “we can be friends in future⁠—⁠all the
better, I hope, for this little explanation. I’m rich, of course, Will; and a
great many men, circumstanced as you were, would have been glad to
marry me for the sake of my money. I liked you all the more, I like you the
more to-day, in that that has never counted for one moment with you. If
you’d been a mercenary man, you’d have dissembled and pretended; you
need never have let me see how much you loved that girl; or, if you had,
you might have led me to suppose you had gradually forgotten her. . . . Dear
friend”⁠—⁠and she turned to him once more with a sudden burst of
uncontrollable feeling⁠—⁠“we are man and woman, as you say, not boy and
girl; so why should I be ashamed to open my whole heart to you? You’ve
told me the truth, like a man; why shouldn’t I tell you the truth, in return,
like a woman? I will. I can’t help it. I have waited and watched and thought
often to myself, ‘In time, he must surely, surely get over it. He must cease
to love her; he can never really have loved her so much as he imagines; he
must turn at last to me, when he forgets all about her.’ So I waited and
watched, and, month after month, I thought at last you must surely begin to
forget her. But, month after month, I have seen you loved her still; and
while you loved her still, . . . Will, Will, dear Will, I didn’t want you to ask
me.”
Will seized her hand once more, and kissed it tenderly. “Oh, how good
you are!” he cried, in a very melting voice. “Rue, do you know, when you
talk like that, you make me love you!”
“But not better than her?” Rue murmured, softly.
Will couldn’t lie to her. “No; not better than her,” he answered slowly,
in a very low voice. “If it were otherwise, I’d have asked you this very
minute, dear sister.”
Rue rose and faced him. The firelight flickered red on her soft white
dress; he could see by its bright glow the tears still trickling slow down
those full round cheeks of hers. “After this, Will, I must go,” she said.
“Don’t come again to-morrow. Next week, you may call if you like, some
afternoon, casually; but for Heaven’s sake, please, don’t refer to this
interview. I have only one thing to say, and when I’ve said it, I must run
from you. Remember, I’m a woman; my pride is fighting hard against my

love to-night⁠—⁠and, if I let love win, I should for ever despise myself. As
long as you live, don’t speak to me of this matter again, unless you speak to
say, ‘Rue, Rue, I’ve forgotten her.’ If ever that day comes⁠—⁠” and she
flushed rosy red⁠—⁠“you have my answer already; you know you can claim
me.”
She moved over to the door, with hurried step and beating heart, hardly
able to trust herself. With a true sense of delicacy, Will abstained from
opening it. He stood on the hearth-rug, irresolute, and just watched her
depart; he felt, in the circumstances, that course was the more respectful.
With her fingers on the handle, Rue paused, and looked round again. “I
wouldn’t have said so much, even now,” she faltered, “if it weren’t for
this⁠—⁠that I feel you’re the one man I’ve ever met in my life to whom the
question of my money was as dust in the balance. You speak the truth, and I
know I can trust you. If ever you can say to me, ‘I love you better now, Rue,
than I ever loved anyone,’ I am yours: then, take me! But till that day
comes, if come it ever does, let us only be friends. Never speak to me again,
for Heaven’s sake, never speak, as we have spoken this evening.”
She opened the door and passed out, all tremulous. Will waited a
moment, and then, with a throbbing heart, went slowly down the stairs. As
he did so, something moist fell suddenly on his hand that grasped the
bannister. To his immense surprise, he found it was a tear from his own
eyelids⁠—⁠for he too was crying. Poet that he was, he felt more than half-
inclined, while he stood there, hesitating, to rush after her as she went, and
seize her in his strong arms, and cover her with warm kisses that very
minute. For a poet is a man even more than the rest of us. But could he tell
her with truth he had quite forgotten Linnet? Oh, no, no, no; Linnet’s image
on his heart remained graven, even then, quite as deeply as ever. We men
are built so.

CHAPTER XXVII

AULD LANG SYNE

A week or two later, one bright spring afternoon, Will was strolling by
himself down the sunny side of Bond Street. All the world was there⁠—⁠for
the world was in town⁠—⁠and the pavements were crowded. But Will moved
through the stream of well-dressed dawdlers, seeing and hearing little. In
the midst of all that idle throng, his head was full of melodies; he was
working up rhymes to ready-made tunes, undisturbed by the hubbub and
din of London. Of a sudden, somebody stopped and stood straight in front
of him. “Mr Deverill, I believe!” a tuneful voice said, brusquely. Will’s eyes
returned at once from heaven to earth, and saw standing before them⁠—⁠a tall
young man, of somewhat defiant aspect, dressed in the black frock coat and
shiny silk hat of Metropolitan respectability.
Will paused, and surveyed him. He was a good-looking young man,
with much swagger in his air, and a black moustache on his upper lip; but
his face seemed somehow strangely familiar to Will, while his voice stirred
at once some latent chord in the dim depths of his memory. But he wasn’t
one of Will’s fine London acquaintances⁠—⁠the poet saw that much at once
by the cheap pretentiousness of his coat and hat, the flaring blue of his
made-up silk tie, the obtrusive glitter of the false diamond pin which
adorned its centre. The stranger’s get-up, indeed, was redolent of the music
halls. Yet he was handsome for all that, with a certain strange air of native
distinction, not wholly concealed by the vulgar tone of his costume and his
solicitous jewellery. Will held out his hand with that dubitative air which we
all of us display in the first moment of uncertainty towards half-recognised
acquaintances.
“I see you have forgotten me, zen,” the stranger said, in very decent
English, drawing himself up with great dignity, and twirling his black
moustache airily between one thumb and forefinger. “It is long, to be sure,
since we met in ze Tyrol. And I have changed much since zen, no doubt: I
have mixed with ze world; I have grown what you call in English
cosmopolitan. But I see it comes back; I see you remember me now; my
voice recalls it to you.”
Will grasped his hand more cordially. “Yes, perfectly, when you speak,”
he said; “though you are very much changed indeed, as you say; but I see
you’re Franz Lindner.”

“Yes; I’m Mr Franz Lindner,” the stranger replied, half-imperceptibly
correcting him⁠—⁠for it was indeed the Robbler. Will scanned him from head
to foot, and took him in at a glance. He was a fiery young man still, and his
mien, as of old, was part fierce, part saucy. But, oh, what a difference the
change of dress had made in him! No conical hat, no blackcock’s feather
now, whether “turned” or otherwise. In his Tyrolese costume, with his rifle
in his hand, and his cartridges at his side, Franz Lindner had looked and
moved of yore a typical Alpine jäger. But, in black frock-coat and shiny tall
hat, strolling like a civilised snob that he was down the flags of Bond Street,
all the romance and poetry had faded utterly out of him. The glamour was
gone. He looked and moved for all the world to-day like any other young
man of the baser mock-swell sort, dressed up in his Sunday best to lounge
and ogle and bandy vulgar chaff in Burlington Arcade with his predestined
companions.
“Why, what has brought you to London, then?” Will asked, much
astonished.
“Art, art,” the transfigured Robbler responded, offhand, with inimitable
swagger. “You must surely zen know my stage name, zough you don’t seem
to have heard me.” He pulled out a printed card, and handed it to Will with
a flourish. “I am ze Signor Francesco,” he continued, “all ze world is
talking about.” And he threw back his chin and cocked his head on one side,
looking, even as he spoke, more pretentious than ever.
“Oh, indeed!” Will answered with a bewildered little laugh. But it was
the non-committing “Oh, indeed!” of mere polite acquiescence.
Franz Lindner caught the tinge of implied non-recognition in the
Englishman’s voice, and hastened to add, as if parenthetically, “I perform at
ze Pavilion.”
“What, the London Pavilion at the top of the Hay market?” Will
exclaimed, beginning to realise.
Franz Lindner looked hurt. “I’ve seen your name often enough,” he
said, asserting himself still more vigorously as Will seemed to know less of
him; “and I sought, as you were a pillar of ze profession yourself, you
would certainly have seen mine, if it were only on ze posters. I’m advertised
largely. All London rings wis me. Ze County Council has even taken notice
of me. I’m a public character! And I have had ze intention more zan once of
looking you up, as also Mr Florian. But zere, here in London our time is so
occupied! You and I, who are public men, wis professional

engagements⁠—⁠we are ever overtaxed; we know not how to find ze leisure
or ze space for ze claims of friendship.”
“Have you been long in London?” Will asked, turning down with him
towards Piccadilly.
“More zan two years now,” the Robbler answered briskly, lounging on
at his own pace, with a cane in his gloved hand, and staring hard, as he
passed, at every pretty girl he saw on foot or in the carriages. “After I leave
you at Meran, I worked my way slowly⁠—⁠singing, singing, ever
singing⁠—⁠by degrees to Paris. But Paris didn’t suit me; zere is too much
blague zere; zey go in for buffoons; zey laugh at a man of modest merit. I
hate blague myself. So zen I came on pretty soon to London. At first I had
to sing in common low music halls⁠—⁠sous side and zat; but talent, talent is
sure to make its way in ze end. I rose very quick, and now⁠—⁠I am at ze head
of my branch of ze profession.”
“You sing, of course?” Will interposed, restraining a smile at the
Robbler’s delicious self-satisfaction. The man himself was the very same as
ever, to be sure; but ’twas strange what a difference mere externals had
made in him!
“Yes; I sing, and sometimes, too, I play ze zither. But mostly, I sing. It
surprises me, indeed, you should not have heard of my singing.”
“And what’s the particular branch of which you’re the acknowledged
head?” Will asked, still amused at the Tyroler’s complacency.
Franz Lindner held his head very high in the air, and gave a twirl to his
cane, as he answered, with much importance, “My line is ze Mammoss
Continental Comique; ze serio-comic foreigner; zey call me Frenchy. I sing
ze well-known songs in broken English zat are in everybody’s
mous⁠—⁠‘Mossoo Robert is my name,’ or ‘Lay-ces-terre Squarre,’ or ‘Ze
leetle black dawg,’ or ‘Zat lohvely Matilda.’ I wonder you have not heard of
me. ‘Mossoo Robert’ is all ze talk of London. Frank Wilkins writes songs
especially for my voice. If you look in ze music shops, you will see on ze
covers, ‘Written expressly for Signor Francesco.’ Signor Francesco⁠—⁠zat’s
me!” And he tapped his breast, and swelled himself visibly.
“I remember to have seen the name, I think,” Will answered, with a
slight internal shudder, well pleased, none the less, to give some tardy salve
to his companion’s wounded vanity. “I’m glad you’ve got on, and delighted
to find you have such kindly recollections of me.”

Franz Lindner laughed. “Oh, zat!” he said, snapping his fingers in the
air very jauntily. “I was a hot young man zen; I knew little of ze world. You
mustn’t sink much of what a young man did in ze days before he knew how
Society is managed. I owe you no grudge. We were bose of us younger.
Besides, our friend Hausberger has wiped out our old scores. I have
transferred to him, entire, all my feelings in ze matter.”
“That’s well,” Will replied, anxious indeed to learn whether the Tyroler
had heard anything fresh of late years about Linnet. “And Hausberger
himself? What of him . . . and his wife? Have you ever knocked up against
them?”
The Robbler’s brow gathered; his hand clenched his cane hard. It was
clear civilisation and cosmopolitanism, however neatly veneered, hadn’t
made much serious change in his underlying nature. “Zat rascal!” he
exclaimed, bringing his stick down on the pavement with a noisy little thud;
“zat rogue; zat liar! If ever I had come across him, it would be bad for his
head. Sousand devils, what a man! . . . Here, we’re close to ze Cri; will you
come and have a drink? We can talk zis over afterward. I like to offer
somesing to a friend new discovered.”
“It’s not much in my line,” Will answered, smiling; “but still, for old
times’ sake, I’ll go in and have a glass with you.” To say the truth, he was
so eager to find out what Franz might have to communicate that he
stretched a point for once, and broke through his otherwise invariable rule
never to drink anything anywhere except at meal times.
Franz stalked along Piccadilly, and strode airily into the Criterion like
one who knew his way well about the London restaurants. “What’ll you
take?” he asked of Will in an assured tone, which showed the question in
English was a very familiar one to him.
“Whatever you take yourself,” Will answered, much amused, for the
Tyroler was far more at home than himself in a London bar, and far more at
his ease with the London barmaid.
“Two half porters and two small Scotch, miss,” the Robbler cried
briskly to the tousely-haired young woman who attended to his call. “You’ll
find it a very good mixture for zis time of day, Mr Deverill. I always take it
myself. It softens ze organ.”
The young woman fulfilled the order with unwonted alacrity⁠—⁠Franz
was a favourite at the bar, and gave his commands leaning across it with the
arch smile of an habitué⁠—⁠and Will then discovered that the mixture in

question consisted of a glass of Dublin stout, well fortified with a
thimbleful of Highland whisky. He also observed, what he had not at first
sight noticed, that Franz Lindner’s face, somewhat redder than of old, bore
evidence, perhaps, of too frequent efforts for the softening of the organ.
Franz nodded to the barmaid.
“Here’s our meeting!” he said to Will. “Shall we step a little aside here?
We can talk wisout overhearing.”
They drew aside to a round table for their unfinished gossip. “You’re
not in town often, I suppose,” the Tyroler began, scanning his companion
from head to foot with a critical scrutiny.
“Why, I live here,” Will answered, taken aback⁠—⁠“in Craven Street,
Strand; I’ve always lived here.”
“Oh, indeed,” the Robbler responded, with a somewhat superior air; “I
sought from your costume you’d just come up from ze country.”
Will smiled good-humouredly. He was wearing, in point of fact, a soft
slouch hat and a dusty brown suit of somewhat poetical cut, which
contrasted in more ways than one with the music-hall singer’s too elaborate
parody of the glossy silk chimney-pot and regulation frock-coat of the
orthodox Belgravian.
Then Franz came back at a bound to the subject he had quitted on the
flags of Piccadilly. He explained, with much circumlocution and many
needless expletives, how he had heard from time to time, through common
friends at St Valentin, that Andreas Hausberger and his wife had fluctuated
of late years between summer at Munich, Leipzig, Stuttgart, and winter at
Milan, Florence, Naples, Venice. Linnet got on with him very well⁠—⁠oh,
very well indeed⁠—⁠yes; Linnet, you know, was just the sort of girl to get on
very well with pretty nearly anyone. No doubt by this time she’d settled
down into tolerably amicable relations with Andreas Hausberger! Any
children? Oh dear, no; Hausberger’d take care of that; a public singer’s time
is far too valuable to be wasted on the troubles of a growing young family.
Had she come out yet? Well, yes; that is to say, from time to time she’d
sung at concerts in Munich, Florence, and elsewhere. Successfully? Of
course; she’d a very good voice, as voices go, for her sort, and training was
sure to do something at least for it. Franz had heard rumours she was
engaged next season for San Carlo at Naples; you might count upon
Hausberger’s doing his very best, now he’d invested his savings in
preparing her for the stage, to make money out of his bargain.

Through all Franz said, however, there ran still, as of yore, one constant
thread of undying hatred to the man who had outwitted him at Meran and St
Valentin. “Then you haven’t forgiven him yet?” Will inquired at last, after
one such spiteful allusion to Andreas’s meanness.
The Robbler’s hand moved instinctively of itself to his left breast
pocket. He had changed his coat, but not his customs. “I carry it here still,”
he answered, with the same old defiant air, just defining with finger and
thumb the vague outline of the knife that bulged between them through the
glossy broadcloth. “It’s always ready for him. Ze day I meet him⁠—⁠” and he
stopped short suddenly, with a face like a bulldog’s.
“You Tyrolers have long memories,” Will answered, with a little
shudder. “It’s very unfashionable you know, to stab a rival in London.”
Franz showed his handsome teeth. “Unfashionable or not,” he replied,
with a shrug, “it is so I was born; it is so I live ever. As we say in ze song, I
am made zat way. I cannot help it. I never forget an injury. . . . Zough, mind
you,” he continued, after a telling little pause, during which he drove many
times an imaginary knife into an invisible enemy, “it isn’t so much now zat
I grudge him Linnet. Let him keep his fine Frau. Zere are better girls in ze
world, you and I have found out, zan Lina Telser⁠—⁠to-day Frau Hausberger.
We were younger zen; we are men of ze world now; we know higher sings,
I sink, zan a Zillerthal sennerin. What I feel wis him at present is not so
much zat he took away ze girl, as zat he played me so mean a trick to take
her.”
Will smiled to himself in silence. How strangely human feelings and
ideas differ! He himself had never forgotten the beautiful alp-girl with the
divine voice; in the midst of London drawing-rooms he never ceased to
miss her; while Franz Lindner thought he had left Linnet far, far behind,
since he became acquainted with those higher and nobler types, the music-
hall stars of the London Pavilion! “There’s no accounting for tastes,” people
say; oh, most inept of proverbs! surely it’s easy for anyone to account for
the reasons which made Linnet appear so different now in Franz Lindner’s
eyes and in her English poet’s.
But before Franz and Will parted at the Circus that afternoon, they had
made mutual promises, for old acquaintance’s sake⁠—⁠Franz, that he would
graciously accept a stall, on an off-night, at the Duke of Edinburgh’s, to see
Will’s new piece, The Duchess of Modena; and Will, that he would betake
himself to the London Pavilion one of these next few evenings, to hear

Signor Francesco, alias the Frenchy, in his celebrated and universally
encored impersonation of Mossoo Robert in Regent Street.

CHAPTER XXVIII

SIGNORA CASALMONTE

Three years and more had passed since Will’s visit to the Tyrol. Events had
moved fast for his fortunes meanwhile. He was a well-known man now in
theatrical circles. Florian Wood went about, indeed, boasting in clubs and
drawing-rooms that ’twas he who had discovered and brought out Will
Deverill. “It’s all very well to be a poet,” he said, “and it’s all very well to
be born with a head full of rhymes and tunes, of crochets, clefs, and
quavers; but what’s the use of all that, I ask you my dear fellow, without a
critic to push you? A Critic is a man with a fine eye for potentialities.
Before the world sees, he sees; before the world hears, he listens. He sits by
the world’s wayside, as it were, with open eye or ear, and catches unawares
the first faint lisping notes of undeveloped genius. He divines in the bud the
exquisite aroma and perfect hue of the full-blown blossom. Long ago, I said
to Deverill, ‘You have the power within you to write a good opera!’ He
laughed me to scorn; but I said to him, ‘Try!’⁠—⁠and the outcome was,
Honeysuckle. He took up a battered fiddle one day at an old inn in the
Zillerthal, when we two were rusticating on the emerald bosom of those
charming unsophisticated Tyrolese valleys; he struck a few notes on it of his
own composing; and I said to him, ‘My dear Will, Sullivan trembles on his
pedestal.’ At the time he treated it as a mere passing joke; but I made him
persevere; and what was the result?⁠—⁠why, those exquisite airs which found
their way before long to the sheep-runs of Australia, and resounded from
lumberers’ camps in the backwoods of Canada! The Critic, I say, is the true
prophet and sage of our modern world; he sees what is to be, and he helps
to produce it.”
But whether Florian was right in attributing Will’s success to himself or
not, it is certain, at least, that Will was rapidly successful. The world
recognised in him a certain genuine poetical vein which has seldom been
vouchsafed to the English librettist; it recognised in him, also, a certain
depth and intensity of musical sense which has seldom been vouchsafed to
the English dramatic composer.
One afternoon that spring, Will returned to town from a visit to the
Provinces in connection with his new opera, The Lady of Llandudno, then
about to be performed in several country theatres by Mr D’Arcy Clift’s
operatic company. He drove almost straight from the station to Rue’s.
Florian was there in great form; and Mr Joaquin Holmes, the Colorado Seer,

had dropped in for afternoon tea at his fair disciple’s. In spite of Will’s
ridicule, Rue continued to believe in Mr Holmes’ thought-reading and other
manifestions. For the Seer had added by this time a touch of spiritualism to
the general attractions of his flagging entertainments at the Assyrian Hall;
and it is a mysterious dispensation of Providence that wealthy Americans,
especially widows, fall a natural prey to all forms of transcendentalism or
spiritualistic quackery. It seems to be one of the strange devices which
Providence adopts for putting excessive or monopolised wealth into
circulation.
“Mr Holmes wants me to go to the Harmony to-night,” Rue said, with a
smile⁠—⁠“you know what it is⁠—⁠the new Harmony Theatre. He says there’s a
piece coming out there this evening I ought to see⁠—⁠a pretty new piece by
an American composer. You’re going to be crushed, Will. They’ve got a
fresh tenor there, a very good man, whom Mr Holmes thinks a deal of. I’ve
half a mind to go; will you join our party?”
“You ought to hear it,” the Seer remarked, with his oracular air, turning
to Will, and looking critical. “This new tenor’s a person you should keep
your eye upon; I heard him rehearse, and I said to myself at once, ‘That
fellow’s the very man Mr Deverill will want to write a first part for; if he
doesn’t, I’ll retire at once from the prophetic business.’ He has a
magnificent voice; you should get Blades to secure him next season for the
Duke of Edinburgh’s. He’s worth fifty pounds a night, if he’s worth a
penny.”
“Very good trade, a tenor’s,” Florian mused philosophically. “I often
regret I wasn’t brought up to it.”
“What’s his name?” Will asked with languid interest, for he had no great
faith in the Seer’s musical ear and critical acumen.
“His name? Heaven knows,” the Seer answered, with a short laugh; “but
he calls himself Papadopoli⁠—⁠Signor Romeo Papadopoli.”
“There’s a deal in a name, in spite of that vastly overrated man,
Shakespeare,” Florian murmured, musingly. “It’s my belief, if the late
lamented Lord Beaconsfield had only been christened Benjamin Jacobs, or
even Benjamin Israels, he never would have lived to be Prime Minister of
England. But as Benjamin Disraeli⁠—⁠ah, what poetry, what mystery, what
Oriental depth, what Venetian suggestiveness! And Romeo’s good, too;
Signor Romeo Papadopoli! Why, ’twas of Romeo himself the Bard first
asked, ‘What’s in a name? the rose,’ etcætera. And in the fulness of time,

this singer man crops up with that very name to confute him. ‘Ah, Romeo,
Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’ Why, because it looks so extremely
romantic in a line of the playbill, and helps to attract the British public to
your theatre! Papadopoli, indeed! and his real name’s Jenkins. I don’t doubt
it’s Jenkins. There’s a Palazzo Papadopoli on the Grand Canal. But this
fellow was born, you may take your oath, at Haggerston or Stepney!”
“Well, your own name has floated you in life, at any rate,” Rue put in, a
little mischievously.
Florian gazed at her hard⁠—⁠and changed the subject abruptly. “And
there’s a woman in the troupe who sings well, too, I’m told,” he interposed,
with airy grace⁠—⁠the airy grace of five feet⁠—⁠turning to Joaquin Holmes. “I
haven’t heard her myself; I’ve been away from town⁠—⁠you know how
engaged I am⁠—⁠visits, visits in the country⁠—⁠Lady Barnes; Lady
Ingleborough. But they say she sings well; really, Will, you ought to come
with us.”
“Yes; she’s not bad in her way,” the Seer admitted, with a stifled yawn,
stroking his long moustache, and assuming the air of a connoisseur in
female voices. “She’s got a fine rich organ, a little untrained, perhaps, but
not bad for a débutante. A piquante little Italian; Signora Carlotta
Casalmonte she calls herself. But Papadopoli’s the man; you should come,
Mr Deverill; my friend Mr Florian has secured us a box; I dine at Mrs
Palmer’s, and we all go together to the Harmony afterwards.”
“I should like to go,” Will replied with truth; for he hated to leave Rue
undefended in that impostor’s clutches; “but, unfortunately, I’ve invited my
sister and her husband to dine with me to-night at my rooms in Craven
Street.”
“Well, wire to them at once to come on and dine here instead,” Rue
suggested, with American expansiveness; “and then we can all go in a party
together⁠—⁠the more the merrier.”
Will thought not badly of this idea; it was a capital compromise: the
more so as he had asked nobody else to meet the Sartorises, and a family
tête-à-tête with Maud and Arthur wasn’t greatly to his liking. “I’ll do it,” he
said, after a moment’s reflection, “if they’re at home and will answer me.”
Rue sent out a servant to the nearest office with the telegram at once;
and, in due time, an answer arrived by return that Arthur and Maud would
be happy to accept Mrs Palmer’s very kind invitation for this evening. It
was most properly worded; Maud was nothing if not proper. Her husband

had now been appointed incumbent of St Barnabas’s, Marylebone; and her
dignity had received an immense accession. Indeed, she debated for ten
minutes with dear Arthur whether it was really quite right for them to go at
all on such hasty notice; and she was annoyed that Will, after inviting her
himself, should have ventured to put her off with a vicarious dinner-party.
But she went all the same, partly because she thought it would be such a
good thing for Will, “and for our own dear boys, Arthur, if Will were to
marry that rich bourgeoise American,” and partly because she remembered
it would give her such an excellent opportunity of displaying her pretty new
turquoise-blue dinner-dress among the best company, in a box at the
Harmony. Besides, a first night is a thing never to be despised by the wise
man or woman; it looks so well to see next day in the Society papers, “Mrs
Palmer’s box contained, amongst others, Mr Florian Wood, Mr W. Deverill,
his sister, Mrs Sartoris, and her husband, the incumbent of St Barnabas’s,
Marylebone.”
So, at half-past seven, Maud Sartoris sailed in, torquoise-blue and all,
and, holding out her hand with a forgiving smile, murmured gushingly to
her hostess, “We thought it so friendly of you, dear Mrs Palmer, to invite us
like that at a moment’s notice, as soon as you knew we were engaged to
Will, and that Will couldn’t possibly go unless he took us with him! We
want to see this new piece at the Harmony so much; a first night to us quiet
clerical folks, you know, is always such a treat. We’re immensely obliged to
you.”
Dinner went off well, as it usually did where Florian was of the party.
To give Florian his due, he bubbled and sparkled, like the Apollinaris
spring, with unfailing effervescence. That evening, too, he was in specially
fine form; it amused him to hear Mr Joaquin Holmes discourse with an air
of profound conviction on his own prophetic art, and then watch him
glancing across the table under his long dark eyelashes to see between
whiles how Florian took it. The follies and foibles of mankind were nuts to
Florian. It gave the epicurean philosopher a calm sense of pleasure in his
own superiority to see Rue and Arthur Sartoris drinking in open-mouthed
the mysterious hints and self-glorificatory nonsense of the man whom he
knew by his own confession to be a cheat and a humbug. Their eyes seldom
met; Joaquin Holmes avoided such disconcerting experiences; but
whenever they did, Florian’s were brimful of suppressed amusement, while

the Seer’s had a furtive hang-dog air as of one who at once would deprecate
exposure and beseech indulgence.
After dinner, the Seer kept them laughing so long at his admirable
stories of the Far West of his childhood (which Arthur Sartoris received
with the conventional “Ah really, now, Mr Holmes!” of forced clerical
disapprobation) that they were barely in time for the beginning of the opera.
As they entered, the tenor held possession of the stage. Will didn’t think so
much of him; Florian, his head on one side in a critical attitude, observed
oracularly, at the end of his first song, that the Papadopoli was perhaps not
wholly without capabilities. That’s the sort of criticism that Florian loved
best; it enables a man to hedge in accordance with the event. If the fellow
turns out well in the near future, you can say you declared from the very
first he had capabilities; if the public doesn’t catch on, you can remark with
justice that he hasn’t developed what little promise he once showed, and
that from the beginning you never felt inclined to say much for him.
Presently, from the rear of the stage, down the mimic rocks that formed
the background of the scenery, a beautiful woman, entering almost
unobserved, sprang lightly from boulder to boulder of the torrent bed, with
the true elastic step of a mountain-bred maiden. She had a fine ripe figure,
very lithe and vigorous-looking; her features were full, but extremely
regular; her mouth, though large and somewhat rich in the lips, was yet rosy
and attractive. Eyes full of fire, and a rounded throat, with a waxy softness
of outline that recalled a nightingale’s, gave point to her beauty. She was
exquisitely dressed in a pale cream bodice, with what passes on the stage
for a peasant kirtle, and round her rich brown neck she wore a drooping
circlet of half-barbaric-looking lance-like red coral pendants. Before she
opened her mouth, her mere form and grace of movement took the house by
surprise. A little storm of applause burst spontaneous at once from stalls,
boxes, and gallery. The singer paused, and curtsied. She looked lovelier still
as she flushed up with excitement. Every eye in the house was instinctively
fixed upon her.
Will had been gazing round the boxes as the actress entered, to see what
friends of his they might contain, and to nod recognition. The burst of
applause recalled him suddenly to what was passing on the stage. He looked
round and stared at her. For a moment he saw only a very beautiful girl, in
the prime of her days, gracefully clad for her part, and most supple in her
movements. At the self-same instant, before he had time to note more, the

singer opened her mouth, and began to pour forth on his ear lavish floods of
liquid music. Will started with surprise; in a flash of recognition, voice and
face came back to him. He seized Florian by the arm. “Great God!” he
cried, “it’s Linnet!”
Florian struck a little attitude. “Oh, unexpected felicity! Oh, great gain!”
he murmured, in his supremest manner. “You’re right! So it is! A most
undoubted Linnet!”
And Linnet it was; dressed in the impossible peasant costume of
theatrical fancy; grown fuller and more beautiful about the neck and throat;
with her delicate voice highly trained and developed by all that Italian or
Bavarian masters could suggest to improve it; but Linnet still for all
that⁠—⁠the same beautiful, simple, sweet Linnet as ever.
Joaquin Holmes glanced at the programme. “And this,” he murmured
low, “is Signora Carlotta Casalmonte that I spoke about.”
Florian’s eyes opened wide. “Why, of course!” he exclaimed with a
start. “I wonder we didn’t see it. It’s a mere translation:
Casalmonte⁠—⁠Hausberger: Carlotta⁠—⁠Carolina⁠—⁠Lina⁠—⁠Linnet; there you
have it!” And he turned, self-applausive of his own cleverness, to Rue, who
sat beside him.
As for Rue, her first feeling was a sudden flush of pain; so this girl had
come back to keep Will still apart from her! One moment later that feeling
gave place with lightning speed to another; would he care for this peasant
woman so much, and regret her so deeply, if he saw her here in England,
another man’s wife, and an actress on the stage, dressed up in all the vulgar
tinsel gew-gaws, surrounded by all the sordid disenchanting realities of
theatrical existence?
But Will himself knew two things, and two things alone. That was
Linnet who stood singing there⁠—⁠and she wore the necklet he had sent her
from Innsbruck.

CHAPTER XXIX

FROM LINNET’S STANDPOINT

Yes; it was Linnet indeed! The natural chances of Will’s profession had
thrown them together almost inevitably on the very first night of her
appearance in London.
Linnet had looked forward to that night; she had always expected it.
During those three long years that had passed since they parted, she had
never yet ceased to hope and believe that Andreas would some day take her
to England. And if to England, then to London, and Will Deverill. But much
had happened meanwhile. She was the self-same Linnet still, in heart and in
soul, yet, oh! how greatly changed in externals of every sort. Those three
years and a half had made a new woman of her in art, in knowledge, in
culture, in intellect. She had left the Tyrol a mere ignorant peasant-girl; she
came to London now an educated lady, an accomplished vocalist, a
powerful actress, a finished woman of society.
And it was Will Deverill who had first put into her head and heart the
idea and the desire of attaining such perfect mastery in her chosen vocation.
The capacity, the potentiality, the impulse, the instinct, were all there
beforehand; no polish on earth can ever possibly turn a common stone into
a gem of the first water: the beauty of colour, the delicacy of grain must be
inherent from the outset, only waiting for the art of the skilful lapidary to
bring them visibly out and make them publicly manifest. So Linnet had
been a lady in fibre from the very first, inheriting the profound Tyrolese
capacity for artistic receptiveness and artistic effort; everything that was
beautiful in external Nature or human handicraft spoke straight to her heart
with an immediate message⁠—⁠spoke so clear that Linnet could not choose
but listen. Still, it was Will Deverill’s words and Will Deverill’s example
that first set her soul upon the true path of development. It was he who had
read her Goethe’s Faust on the Küchelberg; it was he who had explained to
her the rude Romanesque designs on the portal of the Rittersaal. She had
treasured up those first lessons in her inmost heart: they were the key that
unlocked for her the front door of culture.
Andreas Hausberger, for his part, could never have taught her so. He
had taken her straight from Meran to Verona and Milan. But his soul was
bounded by the one idea of music. Even in the first poignant sorrow of that
hateful honeymoon, however, Linnet had found time to gaze in wonder at
the great amphitheatre, still haunted by the spectral form of the legendary

Dietrich; to cry like a child over the narrow tomb where Juliet never lay; to
tread with silent awe the vast aisles and solemn crypt of San Zeno
Maggiore. At Milan, they loitered long; Andreas set her to work at once
under a famous local teacher, and took her often in the evening to hear
celebrated singers on the stage of La Scala. Such elements in an artistic
education he thoroughly understood, but it never would have occurred to
his mind as any part of a soprano’s training to make her examine the Luinis
and Borgognones of the Brera, or do homage before the exquisite Botticellis
and Peruginos of the Museo Poldi-Pezzoli. To the Wirth of St Valentin such
excursions into the sister arts would have seemed mere waste of valuable
time, for Andreas regarded music as a branch of trade, and had not that
higher wisdom which understands instinctively how every form of art
reflects its influence indirectly on the musician’s mind and the musician’s
inspiration. That wisdom Linnet possessed, and Andreas, after a few
ineffectual remonstrances, let her go her own way and live her own artistic
life unchecked to the top of her bent⁠—⁠the more so as he perceived she sang
best and most vigorously when least thwarted or worried. Moreover, many
well-advised friends assured him in private it was desirable for an actress to
know as much as possible of costume, of colour, of posture, and of
grouping, which could best be learned by studying the works of the great
early painters.
So Linnet went her way, undeterred by her husband, and educated
herself in general culture at the same time that she received her strict
musical training. She knew Raphael’s Sposalizio as intimately after a while
as she knew her own châlet; she gazed on the flowing lines of Luini’s
frescoes till they grew familiar to her eyes as the Stations of the Cross in the
old church at St Valentin. She drank in the cathedral with an endless joy;
she loved its innumerable pinnacles, its thousand statues in the marble
niches: she admired the gloomy antiquity of mouldering Sant’ Ambrogio,
the dim religious aisles of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Amid surroundings like
these, her artistic nature expanded by degrees as naturally as a bud opens
out into a flower before the summer sunshine. She revelled in the
architecture, the pictures, the statuary: Milan stood to the soul of the
peasant-singer as a veritable university.
It was the first time, too, that Linnet had ever found herself in a
bustling, business-like, modern city. The hurry and scurry were as new as
the art to her. The throng of men and women in the crowded streets, the

Piazza, brilliant with the flare of glowing lamps, the great glass-roofed
gallery where the gilded Lombard youth promenaded by night in twos and
threes, or sipped absinthe before the doors of dazzling cafés: all these were
quite fresh, and all these were, in their way, too, an element of education.
There are many who can see no more in Milan than this: they know it only
as the most go-ahead and modernised of Italian cities. Linnet knew better.
To her it was the town of Leonardo and his disciples, of the great marble
pile whose infinite detail escapes and eludes the most observant eye, of the
vast and stately opera house where Otello and Carmen first unfolded their
wonders of sight and sound to her ecstatic senses. Wiser in her generation,
she accepted it aright as the vestibule and ante-chamber of artistic Italy.
From Milan they went on in due time to Florence. There they stopped
less long, for opportunities of learning were not by any means so good as at
Milan and Naples. But those few short weeks in the City of the Soul were to
Linnet as a dream of some artistic Paradise; they made her half forget, for
the moment at least, her lost English lover⁠—⁠and her husband’s presence.
The Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Loggia, the Piazza, the old bridge
across the Arno, the enchanted market-place; Michael Angelo’s tomb,
Giotto’s crusted campanile! What hours she spent, entranced, in the endless
halls of the Uffizi and the Pitti; what moments of hushed awe and rapt
silence of soul before the pallid Fra Angelicos in the dim cells of San
Marco. Ach, Gott, it was beautiful! Linnet gazed with the intense delight of
her mountain nature at Raphael’s Madonnas and Andrea’s Holy Families;
she stood spellbound before the exquisite young David of the Academia;
she wandered with a strange thrill among the marvellous della Robbias and
Donatellos of the Bargello. The Tyrolese temperament is before all things
artistic. A new sense seemed quickened within Linnet’s soul as she trod
those glorious palaces instinct with memories of the Medici and their
compeers. A great thirst for knowledge possessed her heart. She read as she
had never known how to read before. That Florentine time was as her
freshman year in the splendid quadrangles of this Italian Oxford.
Then Rome⁠—⁠the Vatican, the Colosseum, the monuments, St Peter’s,
the loud organs, the singing boys, the incense, the purple robes and mitres,
the great guttering candles! All that could awake in unison every chord of
religion and its sister art, in that simple religious artistic nature, was there to
gratify her! It was glorious! it was wonderful! So her winter passed away,

her first winter with Andreas; she was learning fast, both with eye and with
ear, all that Italy and its masters could possibly teach her.
As spring returned, they went northward through Lombardy and the
Brenner once more on their way to Munich. Her own Tyrol looked more
beautiful than ever as they passed, with its unmelted snows lying thick on
the mountains. But, save for a night at Innsbruck, they might not stop there.
Yet, even after that short lapse of time in southern cities, oh, how different,
how altered little Innsbruck seemed to her! She had thought it before such a
grand big town; she thought it now so much shrunken, so old-world, so
quaint, so homely. And then, no Will Deverill was there, as before, to
brighten it. The mountains gazed down as of old from their precipitous
crags upon the nestling town; they were Tyrolese and home-like; and
therefore she loved them. But everything had a smaller and meaner air than
six months earlier; the queer old High Street was just odd, not magnificent;
the Anna Säule was dwarfed, the Rathhaus had grown smaller. She had only
seen Milan, Florence, Rome, meanwhile; but Milan, Florence, Rome, made
Innsbruck sink at once to its proper place as a mere provincial capital.
While they waited for the Munich train next morning, she strolled into the
Hofkirche, to see once more Maximilian’s tomb with its attendant figures.
She started at the sight. After the Venus and the Laocoon it surprised her to
think she could so lately have stood awestruck before those naïf bronze
abortions!
That summer they spent in Germany, almost wholly at Munich. There
Linnet went through a course of musical training under a well-known
teacher, and there, too, she had ample opportunities, at the same time, of
cultivating to the full her general artistic faculties. Next winter, back to
Italy⁠—⁠this time to Venice, Rome, and Naples. Linnet learnt much once
more; it was all so glorious; the Grand Canal, St Mark’s, the Academy, the
Frari, Sorrento, Capri, Pozzuoli, the great operas at San Carlo. So she stored
her brain all the time with fresh experiences of men, women, and things;
with pictures of places, of architecture, of sculpture, of scenery. Everywhere
her quick mind assimilated at once all that was best and most valuable in
what she saw or listened to; by eye and by ear alike, she was half-
unconsciously educating herself.
But that wasn’t all. She had ideas as well of still higher education. Will
Deverill had given her the first key to books⁠—⁠and books are the gateways
of the deepest knowledge. Partly to escape from the monotony of Andreas

Hausberger’s conversation, partly also quite definitely to fit herself for the
place in the world she was hereafter to fill⁠—⁠when she went to
England⁠—⁠Linnet turned to books as new friends and companions. German
literature first of all, and especially the dramatic. Andreas was wise enough
in his generation to approve of that; he was aware that acquaintance with
plays and with romantic works in general forms no small integral part of an
opera-singer’s equipment. German literature, then, first⁠—⁠Goethe, Schiller,
Lessing, Richter, Paul Heyse, Freiligrath⁠—⁠German literature first, but after
it English. Andreas approved of that, too, for was there not much money to
be made out of England and America? It was well Linnet should enlarge her
English vocabulary; well, too, she should know the plays and novels on
which Romeo e Giulietta, and Lucia di Lammermoor, and I Puritani were
founded. But Linnet herself had other reasons of her own for wishing to
study English. Though she looked upon Will Deverill as something utterly
lost to her, a bright element in her life now faded away for ever, she yet
cherished the memory of that one real love episode so deep in her heart that,
for her Englishman’s sake, she loved England and English. She looked
forward to the time when she should go to England; not so much because
she thought she should ever meet Will Deverill there⁠—⁠Naples and Munich
had taught her vaguely to appreciate the probable vastness of London⁠—⁠but
because it was the country where Will Deverill lived, and it spoke the
tongue Will had made so dear to her. So she read every English book she
could easily obtain⁠—⁠Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray⁠—⁠and
she took oral lessons in conversational English, which as Andreas justly
remarked, would improve her accent, and enable her to sing better in
English opera.
Thus three years passed away, and Linnet in their course saw much of
the Continent. They got as far north and west at times as Leipzig, Brussels,
and even Paris. But they always spent their winters in Italy; it was best for
Linnet’s throat, Andreas thought; it gave her abundance of fresh air and
sunshine; and besides, the Italian style of teaching was better suited, he felt
sure, to her ardent, excitable Tyrolese temperament, than the colder and
more learned Bavarian method.
’Twas at Naples, accordingly, that Linnet came out first as Signora
Casalmonte. But after a short season there, Andreas was quite sufficiently
assured of ultimate success to venture upon taking his prize at once to
England. He would sell his goods, like a prudent merchant that he was, in

the dearest market. When Linnet first learned she was to go to London, a
certain strange thrill of joy and hope and fear coursed through her
irresistibly. London! that was the place where Will Deverill lived! London!
that was the place where she soon might meet him!
She clasped the little metal Madonna that still hung from her neck,
convulsively. “Our Dear Frau, oh, protect me! Save me, oh, save me from
the thoughts of my own heart! Help me to think of him less! Help me to try
and forget him!”
She was Andreas Hausberger’s wife now, and she meant to be true to
him. Love him she never could, but she could at least be true to him. Not in
deed alone, but in thought and in word, as Our Dear Frau knew, she strove
hard to be faithful.
Then came the first fluttering excitement and disappointment of
London⁠—⁠that dingy Eldorado, so rich, so miserable⁠—⁠the dim, dank streets,
the glare, the gloom, the opulence, the squalor of our fog-bound metropolis!
For a week or two, thank Heaven, Linnet was too busy at arrangements and
rehearsals to think of surroundings. They were the weeks during which Will
was away in the Provinces, or he must almost certainly have heard of and
attended the preliminary performances of the forthcoming opera. The final
day arrived, and Linnet, all tremulous at the greatness of the stake, had to
make her first appearance before that stolid sea of unsympathetic, hide-
bound English faces. She had peeped at them from the wings before the
curtain rose; oh, how her heart sank within her. The respectable sobriety of
stalls and boxes, the square-jawed brutality of pit and gallery, the cynical
aspect of the gentlemen of the press, in their faultless evening clothes and
unruffled shirt-fronts⁠—⁠all contrasted so painfully with the vivid excitement
and frank expectancy of the Neapolitan audiences to which alone she had
hitherto been accustomed. One brighter thought, and only one, sustained
her⁠—⁠Dear Lady, forgive her that she should think of it now! these were all
Herr Will’s people, and they spoke Herr Will’s tongue; as Herr Will was
kind, would not they too be kind to her?
So, plucking up heart of grace, though trembling all over, she tripped
down the stage rocks with her free gait of a sennerin. To her joy and
surprise, a burst of applause rose responsive at once from those seemingly
irresponsive dress-coated stalls, those stolidly brutal and square-faced
pittites. Her mere beauty stirred them. Even the gentlemen of the press,
smiling cynically still, drummed their fingers gently on the flat tops of their

opera-hats. Thus encouraged, Linnet opened her mouth and sang. Her throat
rose and fell in a rhythmical tide. She rendered the first stanza of her first
song almost faultlessly. She knew, herself, she had never sung better. Then
came a brief pause before she went on to the second. During that pause, she
raised her eyes to a box of the first tier. The Blessed Madonna in Britannia
metal on the oval pendant, ever faithful at a pinch, almost crumpled in her
grasp as she looked and started. It was Will she saw there, Will, Will, her
dear Englishman; and Herr Florian by his elbow, and the grand foreign
Frau, the fair-haired Frau, the Frau with the diamonds, ever still beside
them!
In a second, Linnet felt from head to foot a great thrill break over her. It
broke like a wave of fire, in long, undulating movement, as she had felt it at
Innsbruck. The wave rose from her feet, as before, and coursed hot through
her limbs, and burnt bright in her body, till it came out as a crimson flush on
neck and chin and forehead. Then it descended once more, thrilling through
her as it went, in long, undulating movement, from her neck to her feet
again. She felt it as distinctly as she could feel Our Blessed Lady clenched
hard in her little fist. Her Englishman was there, whom she thought she had
lost; as at Innsbruck, so in London, he had come to hear her sing her first
song in public!
All at once, yet again, the same strange seizure came over her. As her
eyes met Will’s, and that wave of fire ran resistlessly through her, she was
conscious of a weird sense she had known but once in all her life before⁠—⁠a
sudden failure of sound, a numb deadening of the orchestra. Not a note
struck her ear. It was all a vast blank to her. Instinctively, as she sang, her
right hand toyed with Will’s coral necklet, but her left, with all its might,
still gripped and clasped Our Lady with trembling fingers. She heard not a
word she herself was uttering; she knew not how she sang, or whether she
sang at all; in an agony of terror, of remorse, of shame, she kept her eyes
fixed on the conductor’s bâton. By its aid alone she kept true to her
accompaniment. But her heart went up silently in one great prayer to Our
Lady. When she felt this at Innsbruck she knew it was love. If it meant love
still⁠—⁠Andreas Hausberger’s wife⁠—⁠Oh! Blessed Mother, help! Oh! Dear
Lady, protect her!

CHAPTER XXX

AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR

How she got through that song, how she got through that scene, Linnet
never knew. She was conscious of but two things⁠—⁠Will Deverill’s presence
and the Blessed Madonna. Remorse and shame almost choked her
utterance. But mechanically she went on, and sang her part out to the
end⁠—⁠sang it exquisitely, superbly. Have you ever noticed that what we do
most automatically, we often do best? It was so that night at the Harmony
with Linnet. She knew her music well; she had studied it carefully; and the
very absence of self-consciousness which this recognition gave her, made
her sing it more artlessly, yet more perfectly than ever. She forgot the
actress and the singer in the woman. That suited her best of all. Her mental
existence was divided, as it were, into two distinct halves; one conscious
and personal, absorbed with Will Deverill and Our Dear Lady in Britannia
metal; the other unconscious and automatic, pouring forth with a full throat
the notes and words it was wound up to utter. And the automatic self did its
work to perfection. The audience hung entranced; Andreas Hausberger,
watching them narrowly from a box at the side, hugged his sordid soul in
rapture at the thought that Linnet had captured them on this her first night in
that golden England.
She sang on and on. The audience sat enthralled. Gradually, by slow
stages, the sense of hearing came back to her. But she had done as well, or
even better without it. The act went off splendidly. Andreas Hausberger was
in transports. At the first interval between the scenes, Rue debated in her
own soul what to do about Linnet; but, being a wise woman in her way, she
determined to wait till the end of the piece before deciding on action. Act
the Second, Act the Third, Act the Fourth followed fast; in Act the Fifth
when Linnet, no longer a peasant girl, but the bride of the Grand Duke,
came on in her beautiful pale primrose brocade, cut square in the bodice
like a picture of Titian’s, the audience cheered again with a vociferous
outburst. Linnet blushed and bowed; a glow of conscious triumph suffused
her face; then she raised her eyes timidly to the box on the first tier. Her
victory was complete. She could see by his face Will Deverill was
satisfied⁠—⁠and the grand lady with the diamonds was sincerely applauding
her.
Was the grand lady his wife? Why not? Why not? What could it matter
to her now? She was Andreas Hausberger’s. And Will⁠—⁠why, Will was but

an old Zillerthal acquaintance.
Yet she clutched Our Blessed Frau tighter than ever in her grasp, at that
painful thought, and somehow hoped illogically Our Blessed Frau would
protect her from the chance of the grand lady being really married to Will
Deverill. Not even the gods, says Aristotle, in his philosophic calm, can
make the past not have been as it was. But Linnet thought otherwise.
The curtain fell to a storm of clapping hands. After that a moment’s lull;
then loud cries of “Casalmonte!” The whole theatre rang with them. The
Papadopoli, revived by magic from his open-air deathbed on the blood-
stained grass, came forward before the curtain, alive and well, his wounds
all healed, leading Linnet on his right, and bowing their joint
acknowledgments. At sight of the soprano, even the cynical critics yielded
spontaneous homage. It was a great success; a very great success. Linnet
panted, and bowed low. Surely she had much to be grateful for that night;
surely the Blessed Madonna in heaven above had stood by her well through
that trying ordeal!
But in Rue Palmer’s box, after all was over, Florian’s voice rose loud in
praise of this new star in our musical firmament. “When first she swam into
my ken,” he said, “on her Tyrolese hillside⁠—⁠you remember it, Deverill⁠—⁠I
said to myself, ‘Behold a singer indeed! Some day, we may be sure, we
shall welcome her in London.’ And now, could any mortal mixture of
earth’s mould breathe purer music or more innate poesy?”
For it was Florian’s cue, as things stood, to make much of Linnet, for
many reasons. In the first place, it would reflect credit and glory on his
insight as a critic that he should have spotted this flaming comet of a season
while as yet it loomed no larger than the eleventh magnitude. Indeed, he
had gone down among the other critics between the acts, and buttonholed
each of them in the lobby, separately. “A discovery of my own, I can assure
you. I found her out as a peasant-girl in a Tyrolese valley, and advised her
friends to have her trained and educated.” Then, again, his praise of Linnet
no doubt piqued Rue; and Florian, in spite of rebuffs, had still one eye
vaguely fixed in reserve on Rue’s seven hundred thousand. Faint heart, he
well knew, never won fair lady. Besides, Florian felt it was a good thing
Will’s cow-girl should have come back to him in London thus transformed
and transfigured; for he recognised in Will his one dangerous rival for Rue’s
affections, and he was bent as of old on getting rid of Will by diverting him,
if possible, upon poor helpless Linnet. The mere fact of her being married

mattered little to a philosopher. So he murmured more than once, as Linnet
bowed deeper and deeper, “What a beautiful creature she is, to be sure! You
remember, Will, what I said of her when we met her first in the Zillerthal?”
Even poets are human. There was a malicious little twinkle in the corner
of Will’s eye as he answered briskly, “Oh yes; I remember it word for word,
my dear fellow. You said, you thought with time and training, she ought to
serve Andreas Hausberger’s purpose well enough for popular
entertainments. Her voice, though undeveloped, was not wholly without
some natural compass.”
Will had treasured up those words. Florian winced at them a little⁠—⁠they
were not quite as enthusiastic as he could have wished just now; but he
recovered himself dexterously. “And I told Hausberger,” he went on, “it was
a sin and a shame to waste a throat like that on a Tyrolese troupe; and,
happily, he took my advice at once, and had her prepared for the stage by
the very best teachers in Italy and Germany. I’m proud of her success. It’s
insight, after all⁠—⁠insight, insight alone, that makes and marks the Heaven-
born Critic.”
Rue was writing meanwhile a hurried little note in pencil on the back of
a programme. She had debated with herself during the course of the piece
whether or not to send down and ask Linnet to visit them. Her true woman’s
nature took naturally at last the most generous course⁠—⁠which was also the
safest one. She folded the piece of paper into a three-cornered twist, and
handed it with one of her sunny smiles to the Seer. It was addressed “Herr
Hausberger.” “Will you take that down for me, Mr Holmes?” she asked,
with a little tremor, “and tell one of the waiting-girls to give it at once to
Madame Casalmonte’s husband.”
The Seer accepted the commission with delighted alacrity. In a moment
he had spied game; his quick eye, intuitive as a woman’s, had read at a
glance conflicting emotions on Rue’s face, and Will’s and Florian’s.
Whatever else it might mean, it meant grist for the mill; he would make his
market of it. A suspicion of intrigue is the thought-reader’s opportunity.
Linnet was standing at the wings in a flutter of excitement, all tremulous
from her triumph, and wondering whether or not Will would come down to
ask for her, when Andreas Hausberger bustled up, much interested,
evidently, with some pleasurable emotion. He had seen his wife between the
acts already, and assured her of his satisfaction at so fortunate an event for
the family exchequer. But now he came forward, brimming over with fresh

pleasure, and waving a note in his hand, as he said to her briskly in German,
“Don’t wait to change, Linnet. This is really most lucky. Mrs Palmer⁠—⁠the
lady we met at Innsbruck, you know⁠—⁠wants to see you in her box. She’s
immensely rich, I’m told; and Florian Wood’s up there with her. The
manager assures me he’s one of the most influential critics in London.
Come along, just as you are, and mind you speak nicely to her.”
The lights were left burning long in the passages, as is often the case on
first nights in London. Andreas led the way; Linnet followed him like one
blindfolded. Oh, Blessed Madonna, how strangely you order things on this
earth of yours sometimes! It was her husband himself, then, of all men in
the world, who was taking her to the box where Will Deverill was waiting
for her!
As for Andreas Hausberger, he stalked on before, elated, hardly thinking
of Will⁠—⁠as indeed he had no cause to do. The rich woman of the world and
the influential critic monopolised his attention. Tyrolese though he was, he
was by no means jealous; greed of gain had swallowed up in him all the
available passions of that phlegmatic nature. Linnet was his chattel now; he
had married her and trained her; her earnings were his own, doubly
mortgaged to him for life, and no poet on earth, be he ever so seductive,
could charm them away from him.
He opened the box door with stately dignity. At St Valentin or in
London, he was a person of importance. Linnet entered, quivering. She still
wore her primrose brocade, as all through the last act, and she looked in it,
even yet, a very great lady. Not Rue herself looked so great or so
grand⁠—⁠charming, smiling Rue⁠—⁠as she rose to greet her. They stood and
faced each other. One second Rue paused; then a womanly instinct all at
once overcame her. Leaning forward with the impulse, she kissed the
beautiful, stately creature on both cheeks with effusion, in unfeigned
enthusiasm.
“Why, Linnet,” she said, simply, as if she had always known her; “we’re
so glad to see you⁠—⁠to be the very first to congratulate you on your success
this evening!”
A flood of genuine passion rushed hot into Linnet’s face. Her warm
southern nature responded at once to the pressure of Rue’s hand. She seized
her new friend by either arm, and returned her double kiss in a transport of
gratitude. “Dear lady,” she said, with fervour, in her still imperfect English,

“how sweet that you receive me so! How kind and good you English are to
me!”
Andreas Hausberger’s white shirt-front swelled with expansive joy. This
all meant money. They were really making wonderful strides in England.
Will held his hand out timidly. “Have you forgotten me, Frau
Hausberger?” he asked her in German.
Linnet’s face flushed a still deeper crimson than before, as she answered
frankly, “Forgotten you, Herr Will. Ach, lieber Gott, no! How kind of you
. . . to come and hear my first performance!”
“Nor me either, Linnet, I hope,” Florian interposed more familiarly, in
his native tongue; for he had caught at the meaning of that brief Teutonic
interlude. “I shall always feel proud, Herr Andreas, to think it was I who
first discovered this charming song-bird’s voice among its native
mountains.”
But Will found no such words. He only gazed at his recovered peasant-
love with profound admiration. Fine feathers make fine birds, and it was
wonderful how much more of a personage Linnet looked as she stood there
to-night in her primrose brocade, than she had looked nearly four years
since in her bodice and kirtle on the slopes of the Zillerthal. She was
beautiful then, but she was queenly now⁠—⁠and it was not dress alone, either,
that made all the difference. Since leaving the Tyrol, Linnet had blossomed
out fast into dignified womanhood. All that she had learnt and seen
meanwhile had impressed itself vividly on her face and features. So they sat
for awhile in blissful converse, and talked of what had happened to each in
the interval. Rue sent Florian down with a message to ask their friend the
manager not to turn his gas off while the party remained there. The
manager, bland and smiling, and delighted at his prima donna’s excellent
reception, joined the group in the box, and insisted that they should all
accompany him to supper. To this, the Sartorises demurred, on the
whispered ground of dear Arthur’s position. Dear Arthur himself, indeed,
resisted but feebly; it was Maud who was firm; but Maud was firm as a rock
about it. Let dear Arthur go to supper with a theatrical manager, to meet a
bedizened young woman from a playhouse like that⁠—⁠and him a beneficed
clergyman with an eye to a canonry! Maud simply put her foot down.
So the Sartorises went home in a discreet four-wheeler; but the rest
lingered on, and gossipped of old times in the Tyrol together, and heard
each others’ tales with the deepest interest.

“And your mother?” Will asked at last; he was the first who had thought
of her.
Linnet’s face fell fast. She clasped her dark hands tight. “Ah, that dear
mother,” she said, with a deep-drawn sigh, and a mute prayer to Our Lady.
“She died last winter, when I was away from home⁠—⁠away down in Venice.
I couldn’t get back to her. ’Twas the Herr Vicar’s fault. He never wrote she
was ill till the dear God had taken her. It was too late then. I couldn’t even
go home to say a pater noster over her.”
“So now you’re alone in the world,” Will murmured, gazing hard at her.
“Yes; now I’m alone in the world,” Linnet echoed, sadly.
“But you have your husband, of course,” Florian put in, with a wicked
smile, and a side glance at Andreas, who for his part was engaged in paying
court most assiduously to the rich young widow.
Linnet looked up with parted lips. “Ah, yes; I have my husband,” she
answered, as by an afterthought, in a very subdued tone, which sent a pang
and a thrill through Will’s heart at once⁠—⁠so much did it tell him. He knew
from those few words she wasn’t happy in her married life. How could she
be, indeed⁠—⁠such a soul as hers, with such a man as Andreas?
Their first gossip was over, and they were just getting ready to start for
supper, when one of the box-keepers knocked at the door with a card in his
hand, which he passed to Andreas Hausberger. “There’s a gentleman here
who’s been waiting outside for some time to see you,” he said; “and he
asked me to give you this card at once, if you’ll kindly step down to him,
sir.”
Andreas took it with a smile, and gazed at it unconcernedly. But a dash
of colour mounted suddenly into those pale brown cheeks, as his eye caught
the words neatly engraved on the card, “Mr Franz Lindner,” and below in
the corner, “Signor Francesco, The London Pavilion.”

CHAPTER XXXI

WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK

Andreas handed the card to Will with a sardonic smile. “That wild fellow
again,” he muttered. “I didn’t know he was in England. I suppose I must go
down to the door to see him.”
But Will glanced at the name in profound dismay. It was an awkward
moment. Heaven knew what might come of it. As he gazed and paused, all
that Franz had said to him at the Criterion bar a year before recurred to his
mind vividly. He seized Hausberger’s arm with a nervous clutch, and drew
him a little aside. “Take care of this man Lindner,” he said in a warning
whisper. “He doesn’t love you. He is not to be trusted. If I were you, I
wouldn’t see him alone. He owes you a grudge. Ask him up here, and talk
with him before us all and the ladies.”
“Did you know he was in London?” Andreas inquired, scarcely
flinching.
“Yes; I met him by accident in Bond Street a year ago. I’ve been to hear
him sing at the music hall where he works, and he came with Mr Wood and
myself to the Duke of Edinburgh’s to see Sweet Maisie, one of my pieces.
But he was breathing forth fire and slaughter against you, even then, for
leaving him in the lurch that time at Meran. To tell you the truth, he’s a
dangerous man in a dangerous mood; I can’t answer for what may happen if
you go down alone to him.”
“Let me go down and fetch him,” Florian suggested, blandly. “The job
would just suit me. I’m warranted to disarm the most truculent fool in
Christendom with a smile and a word or two.”
To this middle course Andreas consented somewhat doubtfully. He
knew Franz’s temper and his Tyrolese impetuosity; but, as a Tyroler
himself, hot-hearted at core for all his apparent phlegm, he didn’t feel
inclined to parley through an ambassador with a pretentious Robbler.
However, a scene on the first night would be bad business. That touched a
tender point. So he gave way ungraciously. Florian departed, full of
importance at his post of envoy, and returned in a minute or two with the
Robbler’s ultimatum. “He’s been drinking, I fancy,” he said, “and he’s very
wild and excited; Montepulciano in his eye, Lacrima Christi in his gait,
Falernian in his utterance. But he’ll come up if you like; only I thought,
Rue, as it’s your box, I’d better ask you first whether you’d care to see
him.”

“He isn’t drunk, is he?” Rue asked, shrinking back. “We couldn’t have a
drunken man shown up into the box here.”
“Not more drunk than a gentleman should be,” Florian answered, airily.
“He can walk and talk, and I think he can behave himself. But he’s a good
deal flushed, and somewhat flustered, and he expresses a burning desire for
Herr Hausberger’s heart-blood, in a guttural bass, with quite unbecoming
ferocity.”
Rue shrank away with a frightened face. “Oh, don’t bring him up here!”
she cried. “Please, Florian, don’t bring him up here. I’m so afraid of tipsy
men; and you don’t really think he wants to murder Herr Hausberger?”
“Well, not exactly to murder him, perhaps,” Florian replied, with a
tolerant and expansive smile; “that would be positively vulgar; but to fight
him, no doubt; and, if possible, to put an end to him. The duel in one form
or another, you see, is a most polite institution. We don’t call it murder in
good Society. Lindner feels himself aggrieved⁠—⁠there’s a lady in the
case⁠—⁠” and he gave an expressive side-glance over his shoulder towards
Linnet, “so he desires to bury his knife to the hilt in the gentleman’s body
whom, rightly or wrongly, he conceives to have acted ill towards him.
Nothing vulgar in that you’ll allow: a most natural sentiment. Only, as Herr
Hausberger’s friends in this little affair, we must strive our best to see that
all things are done, as the apostle advises, decently and in order.”
Linnet drew back with a convulsive gasp. Was this bloodshed they
contemplated, and were talking of so calmly? Will laid his hand on Rue’s
arm. Even in the heat of the moment, Linnet noticed that simple action, and,
she knew not why, her heart sank within her.
“If I were you, Rue,” Will put in very hurriedly, “I’d let this man come
in; drunk or sober, I’d see him. It’s better he should speak with Herr
Hausberger here than anywhere else. Try to sink your own feelings and put
up with him for a minute or two. If you don’t, I’m afraid I can’t answer for
the consequences.”
He spoke very seriously. Rue drew back, still shrinking. Her face was
pale but her voice was firm. “Very well, Will,” she answered, without
another word of demur. “I hate a tipsy man; but if you wish it, I’ll see him
here.”
Linnet noticed the lingering stress of her voice on the you, and the
obvious familiarity that subsisted between them; and she thought to herself

once more, what did it matter to her?⁠—⁠she was Andreas Hausberger’s wife
now. Blessed Madonna, protect her!
Florian disappeared a second time, buoyant as usual, and came back in a
minute⁠—⁠bringing Franz Lindner with him. The Seer had left the box some
moments earlier; Linnet and Rue stood forward towards the door, as if to
break the attack, with Andreas in the background, between Will and the
manager. Florian flung the door open with his customary flourish. “Mr
Franz Lindner!” he said, introducing him with a wave of his dainty small
hand, “whose charming performance on the zither we had the pleasure of
hearing, you will recollect, Rue, with Signora Casalmonte, some years ago
at Innsbruck.”
The Robbler stepped into the box, erect, haughty, defiant. His handsome
face was flushed and flown with drink; but his manner was alert, self-
respecting, angry. He glared about him with fierce eyes. His left hand, held
to his bosom, just defined between finger and thumb the vague shape of the
bowie in his breast coat pocket; his right was disengaged with a tremulous
quiver, as if in readiness to spring at Andreas Hausberger and throttle him.
With unexpected presence of mind, Rue extended her pretty gloved
hand towards the Robbler, cordially, as if she fancied he had come on the
most ordinary errand. “We’re so glad to see you, Mr Lindner,” she cried, in
a natural voice, and with apparent frankness⁠—⁠though that was a fearful
feminine fib; “I remember so well your delightful jodels! You were a
member of Herr Hausberger’s company then, I recollect. How charmingly
his wife has been singing here this evening!”
The Robbler gazed about him, a little disconcerted at so different a
welcome from the one he had expected. However, as things stood, the
acquired instincts of civilisation compelled him to hold in check for a
moment the more deeply ingrained impulses of his mountain nature.
Besides, Rue’s words appealed at once to his personal vanity. To think that
this beautiful and exquisitely-dressed lady, with the diamonds on her white
neck, and the dainty pale gloves on her tapering fingers, should receive him
in her box like a gentleman and an equal! How could he jump at his
enemy’s throat then and there before her eyes? How remain insensible to so
much grace, so much tact, so much elegance? Moreover, he was taken
aback by the number of persons in the box, the unexpected brilliancy, the
imposing evening dress, Linnet’s stately costume, Rue’s dazzling jewellery.
He had come up there, meaning to rush at his antagonist the very moment

he saw him, and plunge a knife into his heart, like a true Tyrolese Robbler,
even here in London. Instead of that, he paused irresolute, took the gloved
hand in his, bent over it with the native dignity and courtesy of his race, and
faltered, in broken English, some inarticulate words of genuine gratification
that Mrs Palmer should deign to remember so kindly his poor performances
on the zither at Innsbruck.
Then Will came forward in turn, seized the Robbler’s right hand, wrang
it hard and long⁠—⁠just to occupy the time, and prevent possible
mischief⁠—⁠and poured forth hurried remarks, one after another, hastily,
about Linnet’s first appearance, and the success of her singing. It was a
friendly meeting. The manager chimed in, with Florian in his most ecstatic
mood for chorus. Franz Lindner’s blood boiled; dazed and startled as he
was, more than ever now he felt in his heart of how great a prize Andreas
Hausberger had defrauded him. By trickery and stealth that sordid wretch
had defrauded him. The ladies at the London Pavilion, indeed! Why, Linnet
on those boards⁠—⁠Linnet in that dress⁠—⁠Linnet in her transformed and
transfigured beauty⁠—⁠she was worth the whole troupe of them! Yet what
could he do? Linnet held out her frank hand; Franz grasped it fervently. Her
beauty surprised him. She was no longer, he saw well, the mere musical
peasant girl; she had risen to the situation; she was now a great artist, a
great lady, a queen of the theatre.
Primitive natures are quick. Their emotions are few, but strong and
overpowering. Mood succeeds mood with something of the rapidity and
successive effacement we see in children. Franz Lindner had entered that
box, full of rage and anger, thirsting only for blood, eager to wreak his
vengeance on the man who had offended him. He had no thought of love
for Linnet then; only a fierce, keen sense of deadly resentment towards
Andreas. Now, in a moment, as Linnet let her soft hand lie passive in his,
like an old friend recovered, another set of feelings rushed over him
irresistibly. His heart leaped up into his mouth at her pressure. Why, Linnet
was beautiful; Linnet was exquisite; Linnet was a prize worth any man’s
winning. If he stabbed Andreas then and there before his wife’s very eyes,
he might glut his revenge, to be sure⁠—⁠but what would that avail him? Why
go and be hanged for killing Linnet’s husband, and leave Linnet herself for
some other man to woo, and win, and be happy with? Herr Will, there,
would thank him, no doubt, for that chance; for he could plainly see by his
eyes Herr Will was still deeply in love with Linnet. No, no,⁠—⁠hot heart;

down, down for the present! Keep your hands off Andreas’s throat; wait for
sweeter vengeance! To win away his wife from him, to steal her by force, to
seduce her by soft words, to wile her by blandishment⁠—⁠that were a better
revenge in the end than to stick a knife in him now⁠—⁠though to stick a knife,
too, is very good requital! Sooner or later, Franz meant to have Andreas
Hausberger’s blood. But not to be hanged for it. He would rather live on . . .
to kill Hausberger first, and enjoy his wife afterwards.
All this, quick as lightning, not thought but felt in an indivisible flash of
time, darted fast through Franz Lindner’s seething brain, at touch of
Linnet’s fingers. She spoke a few words to him of friendly reminiscence.
Then Andreas, stepping forward, held out his hand in turn. It was a critical
moment. Linnet’s heart stood still. Franz lifted his arm, half hesitating,
towards his breast coat pocket. Should he stab him⁠—⁠or wring his hand? The
surroundings settled it. It’s a thousand times harder to plunge your knife
into your man before the eyes of ladies and dramatic critics, in a box of a
London theatre, than among the quarrelsome hinds on a Tyrolese hillside.
Surlily and grudgingly, Franz lifted his right⁠—⁠extended it with an effort,
and shook hands with his enemy. Rue and Linnet looked on in an agony of
suspense. Once the grasp was over, every member of the party drew a deep
breath involuntarily. The tension was relieved. Conversation ran on as if
nothing had happened. The whole little episode occupied no more than two
fleeting minutes. At its end they were all chatting with apparent unconcern
about old times at Meran and old friends at St Valentin.
Franz was sobered by the conflict of emotion within him. The manager,
with great tact and presence of mind, invited him promptly to join them at
supper. Franz accepted with a good grace, uncertain yet how he stood with
them, and became before long almost boisterously merry. He kept himself
within due bounds, indeed, before the faces of the ladies, and drank his
share of champagne with surprising moderation. But he talked unceasingly,
for the most part to Linnet, Rue, and Florian; very little to Will; hardly at all
to Andreas Hausberger. They sat late and long. They had all much to say,
and Will, in particular, wished to notice with care the nature of the relations
between Linnet and Andreas. At last they rose to go. Will saw Franz
sedulously to the door of the supper-rooms. He wanted to make sure the
man was really gone. Franz paused for a minute on the threshold of the
steps, and gazed out with vague eyes on the slippery Strand. “Zat’s a fine
woman,” he said, slowly; “a very fine woman. Andreas Hausberger took her

from me. You saved his life zis night. But she’s mine by ze right, and some
day I shall claim her!”
Will took Rue home; she dismissed Florian early. In the brougham, as
they drove, for some time neither spoke of the subject that was nearest both
their hearts; an indescribable shyness possessed and silenced them. At last,
Will said, tentatively, in a very timid voice, striking off at a tangent, “She’s
more beautiful than ever, and she sang to-night divinely. These years have
done much for her, Rue. She returns to us still the same; and yet, oh, how
altered!”
“Yes; she is beautiful,” Rue answered, in a very low tone⁠—⁠“more
beautiful than ever. And such a perfect lady, too⁠—⁠so charming and so
graceful, one can’t help loving her. I don’t wonder at you men, Will, when
even we women feel it.”
They drove on for another minute or two, each musing silently. Then
Will spoke again. “Do you think,” he inquired, in a very anxious voice,
“she’s . . . she’s happy with her husband?”
“No!” Rue answered, decisively. It was the short, sharp, extremely
explosive “No” that closes a subject.
“I thought not, myself,” Will went on, with still greater constraint. “I
was afraid she wasn’t. But . . . I thought . . . I might be prejudiced.”
Rue lifted her eyes, and met his, by the gloom of the gas-lamps. “She’s
very unhappy with him,” she burst out all at once with a woman’s instinct.
“She does not love him, and has never loved him. How could she⁠—⁠that
block of ice⁠—⁠that lump of marble. She tries to do everything that’s right
and good towards him, because he’s her husband, and she ought to behave
so to him. She’s a good woman, I’m sure⁠—⁠a pure, good woman; her soul’s
in her art, and she tries not to think too much of her unhappiness. But she
loves somebody else best⁠—⁠and she knows she loves him. I saw it in her
eyes, and I couldn’t be deceived about it.”
“You think so?” Will cried, eagerly. Her words were balm to him. Rue
drew a deep sigh. “I don’t think it; I know it,” she answered, sadly.
“O Rue, how good you are,” Will murmured, with a feeling very much
like remorse. “What other woman on earth but yourself would tell me so?”
Rue sighed a second time. “I saw it in her eyes,” she went on, looking
hard at him still, “when first she noticed you; I saw it still more when that
dreadful man Lindner came up into the box, and she waited trembling, to
see what was going to happen. I watched her face; it was full of terror. But

it wasn’t the loving terror of a woman who thinks the husband she adores is
just about to be attacked; it was the mere physical terror of a shrinking soul
at the sight of a crime, a quarrel, a scuffle. You saved that man’s life, Will;
whether you know it or not, you saved it; for the other was a quarrelsome,
revengeful fellow, who came there fully prepared, as Florian told us, to stab
his rival. You saved his life; and when I looked at yourself, and Linnet
standing by, I thought at the time what a bad turn you had done⁠——”
“For her?” Will suggested, in a very low tone.
“Oh no,” Rue answered aloud; “not for her alone, but for you as
well⁠—⁠for you and her⁠—⁠for both of you.”

CHAPTER XXXII

WEDDED FELICITY

Signora Casalmonte scored a distinct success. She was the great dramatic
and musical reality of that London season. All the world flocked to hear
her; her voice made the fortune of the Harmony Theatre. She was invited
everywhere⁠—⁠“You must have the Casalmonte,” Florian laid down the law
in his dictatorial way to Belgravian hostesses⁠—⁠and Andreas Hausberger
went always in charge, wherever she moved, to guard his splendid operatic
property. And what care Andreas took of her! It was beautiful, beautiful!
Unobservant people thought him a most devoted husband. He lingered
always by the Signora’s side; he supplied wraps and shawls on the remotest
threat of a coming chill; he watched what she ate and drank with the
composite eye of a lynx and a physician; he guarded her health from the
faintest suspicion of danger in any way. On off-nights, he would seldom
allow her to dine out or attend evening parties; on Sundays, he took her
down for change of scene and fresh air to the sea or the country. Ozone was
his hobby. Every day, the prima donna drove out in the Park, and then
walked for exercise a full hour in Kensington Gardens. Unobservant people
set all this down to the account of the domestic affections; Will Deverill
noticed rather that Andreas guarded his wife as a racing man guards the
rising hope of his stables. Andreas was far too sensible a man of the world
to run any needless risks with the throat of the woman who made his
fortune. He had staked a great deal on her, and he meant to be repaid with
compound interest.
As for London itself, it went wild about Linnet. ’Twas the Casalmonte
here, the Casalmonte there; the diva will sing at Lady Smith’s to-night; the
diva will go with Sir Thomas Brown and party to supper. Linnet’s head was
half-turned with so much admiration; if she hadn’t been Linnet, indeed, it
would have been turned altogether. But that simple childlike nature, though
artistically developed and intellectually expanded, remained in emotion as
straightforward and unaffected and confiding as ever. Still, that season did
the best it knew to spoil her. She was queen of the situation. It rained choice
flowers; diamond bracelets and painted fans showered down upon her
plentifully. Linnet accepted all this homage, hardly realising its money
worth; she was pleased if she gave pleasure; what others gave in return, she
took as her right, quite simply and naturally. This charm of her simplicity
surprised and delighted all who grew to know her; she had none of the

affected airs and graces of the everyday great singer; she sang because she
must; at heart she was, as always, the mountain-bred peasant-girl.
Will Deverill saw but little of her. ’Twas better so, he knew, and kinder
so for Linnet. Once or twice that year, however, he supped after the theatre
in the Strand with “the Hausbergers,” as he had learned to call them. On all
these occasions, he noticed, Andreas watched his wife close. “One glass of
champagne, Linnet; you remember, last time, when you dined at the
Mowbrays’, you took two glasses, and you sang next day very much less
well for it”; or else⁠—⁠“If I were you, Linnet, I wouldn’t touch that lobster. It
disagreed with you once, and I noticed in the evening one or two of your
high notes were decidedly not so clear or so sharp as usual.”
“But, Andreas,” Linnet answered, on one such occasion, “I’m sure it
doesn’t hurt me. I must take something. I’ve hardly eaten a single mouthful
yet, and to-night I’m so hungry.”
“It does you no harm to be hungry,” Andreas answered, philosophically.
“Nobody ever reproached himself afterwards for having eaten too little. A
taste of something to eat, after playing a trying part like Melinda, before
you go to bed, helps you to sleep sound, and keeps you well and healthy;
but a square meal at this hour can’t be good for anybody. It interferes with
rest; and what interferes with rest, tells, of course, upon the voice⁠—⁠which is
very serious. You may have a bit of that sweetbread, if you like⁠—⁠no; that’s
a great deal too much; half that quantity, if you please, Mr Florian. Pull
your woollen thing over your shoulder, so, Linnet; there’s a draught from
that door! I can’t have you getting as hoarse as a frog to-night, with the
Prince and Princess coming to hear you on Monday!”
“Why on earth does she stand it?” Florian asked of Will afterwards, as
they walked home together down the unpeopled Strand. “I can’t make it
out. There she’s earning Heaven only knows how much a night, and filling
the treasury; yet she allows this fellow to bully her and badger her like this;
to dictate to her how much she’s to eat and to drink; to make her whole life
one perpetual torment to her. Why doesn’t she rise and strike for freedom, I
wonder? He’d have to come to terms; she’s too useful to him, you see, for
him to risk a quarrel with her.”
“She’s too good⁠—⁠that’s where it is,” Will responded, with a tinge of
stifled sadness in his voice; “and, besides, she doesn’t care for him.”
“Of course she doesn’t,” Florian answered, airily. “How could she,
indeed!⁠—⁠a mass of selfishness like him!⁠—⁠so mean, so sordid! But that only

makes it all the stranger she should ever put up with it. If she doesn’t love
him, why on earth does she permit him to dictate to her as he does⁠—⁠to
order her and domineer over her?”
“Ah, that’s how it looks to you,” Will answered, with a sigh; “but
Linnet⁠—⁠well, Linnet sees things otherwise. You must remember, Florian,
above all things, she’s a Catholic. She doesn’t love that man, but she’s
entered with him into the sacrament of marriage. To her, it has all a
religious significance. The less she loves Andreas, the more does she feel
she must honour and obey him, and be a good true wife to him. If she loved
him, she might perhaps sometimes rebel a little; because she doesn’t love
him, she has become a mere slave to do his bidding.”
“I suppose that’s it,” Florian answered, swinging his stick in his hand,
and stepping along gingerly. “Drôle de croyance, isn’t it? Still, I call it
disgraceful. An exquisite creature like that⁠—⁠a divinely-inspired singer, a
supply-moulded form of Hellenic sculpture, whom the Gods above have
given us as a precious gift for the common delight and the common
enjoyment⁠—⁠to be thwarted and pulled up short at every twist and turn⁠—⁠and
by whom, I’d like to know? Why, by a Tyrolese innkeeper⁠—⁠a mere village
host⁠—⁠who arrogates to himself the right of monopolising what Heaven
meant for us all⁠—⁠Ach! I call it detestable, just simply detestable. He hardly
allows her enough to eat and drink. She might just as well be a sennerin on
her hillside again, for any pleasure or delight she gets out of her success,
tied and hampered as she is with this creature Hausberger.”
“That’s quite true,” Will replied. “She was happier in the Zillerthal. She
has money, and fine dresses, and jewellery, and applause; but, for any good
they can do her, she might as well be without them. Hausberger treats her as
a mere machine for making money for him. He’s careful to see the machine
works thoroughly well, and doesn’t get out of order⁠—⁠absurdly careful, in
fact, for he’s by nature over-cautious; but as for allowing her to enjoy
anything of what she earns herself, in any reasonable way⁠—⁠why, it never
even occurs to him.”
“Do you think he’s unkind to her?” Florian asked, somewhat carelessly.
“I mean, do you think he ill-treats her⁠—⁠keeps her short, and so forth?”
“He doesn’t actively ill-treat her, I’m sure,” Will answered with
confidence; “he has far too great a sense of the value of her health to do
anything to injure it. And I don’t suppose he even keeps her actually short;
she’s always beautifully dressed, of course⁠—⁠that’s part of the

advertisement; and he takes her about as much as he can, without risk to her
voice, and lavishes a certain sort of wooden care upon her. But I don’t think
he ever regards her as a human being at all; he regards her as a delicate
musical instrument in which he has invested money, and out of which,
during a given number of years, he has to recoup himself and make his
fortune. As to sympathy between them, why, naturally, that’s quite out of
the question; he’s a harsh, stern man who hardly knows how to be kind, I
should say, to anyone.”
Florian brought down his stick on the pavement with a bang. “It’s
atrocious,” he said, snorting; “I declare, quite atrocious. Here’s this
exquisite creature⁠—⁠a banquet fit for the Gods⁠—⁠with her superb voice and
her queenly beauty; a creature almost too ethereal for ordinary humanity to
touch or handle; one that should be reserved by common consent for the
delectation of the very pink and pick of the species”⁠—⁠and he drew himself
up to his five feet nothing with a full consciousness of his own claim to be
duly enrolled in that select category⁠—⁠“here’s this exquisite creature, who
should be held in trust, as it were, for the noblest and truest and best of our
kind⁠—⁠a Koh-i-noor among women⁠—⁠flung away upon a solid, stolid, three-
per-cent. investing, money-grubbing, German-speaking beerhouse-keeper.
Pah! It makes me sick! This Danae to a Satyr! How a Greek would have
writhed at it!”
“And yet I thought,” Will murmured, reflectively, with a quiet little
smile, “you considered her a cow-girl, and looked upon her as just fit for
gentlemen to play skittles with!”
It took a great deal to abash Florian. He paused for a second, then he
answered with warmth, “Now, there, Deverill! that’s just like you. You want
me to be consistent! But the philosophic mind, as Herbert Spencer remarks,
is always open to modification by circumstances. Consistency is the virtue
of the Philistine intellect; it means, inability to march abreast with events, to
readjust one’s ideas, one’s sympathies, one’s sentiments, to the ever-
changing face of circumambient nature. When we saw Linnet first in the
Tyrol, long ago, why, the girl was a cow-girl; a cow-girl she was, and a
cow-girl I called her. I frankly recognised the facts of life as I found
them⁠—⁠though I saw even then, with a voice like that, there was no perilous
pinnacle of name or fame to which fate might not summon her. Now that
she reappears in London once more, a flaming meteor of song, the cynosure
of neighbouring eyes, a flashing diamond of the purest water, I recognise

equally the altered facts. I allow that training, education, travel, the society
of cultivated men and women, have practically made a brand-new Linnet of
her. It’s that brand-new Linnet I admire and adore⁠—⁠that queen of the stage,
not the Tyrolese cow-girl.”
Will turned sharp down Craven Street “And I,” he said, with a Parthian
shot, “I admire and adore the real woman herself⁠—⁠the same Linnet still that
we knew in the Zillerthal.”
Meanwhile, Andreas Hausberger, lighting a big cigar, had taken his wife
down to a cab outside the supper-room.
“O Andreas!” Linnet cried, in German, “you’ve called a hansom. I can’t
bear those things, you know. I wanted a four-wheeler.”
Andreas looked at her fixedly. “Get in!” he said, with curt decision.
“Don’t stand and talk like that out here in the cold street, opening your
throat in this foggy air after those over-heated rooms. It’s simply ridiculous.
And mind you don’t knock your dress against that muddy wheel! Pick it up,
I say! pick it up! You are so careless!”
“But, Andreas!” Linnet exclaimed, in an imploring tone, “I hate these
hansoms so. Whenever I go in one, the horse invariably either kicks or jibs.
I wish, just this once, you’d let me have a four-wheeler.”
She spoke almost coaxingly. Andreas turned to her with an angry
German oath. “Didn’t I tell you to get in at once?” he cried. “Pull that thing
over your shoulder. Don’t stand here chattering and catching cold all night.
Jump in when I bid you. A pretty sort of thing, indeed, if you’re going to
stop and discuss in a dress like that on an English evening upon these
muddy pavements!” He helped her up the step, guarding her skirt with one
hand, and jumped after her sulkily. “Avenue Road, St John’s Wood!” he
called out through the flap to the attentive cabman. “Half-past twelve! Ach,
donner-wetter! How late we’ve stayed! We’ll have to pay double fare! Have
you got your purse with you?”
“Yes,” Linnet half sobbed out; “but I’ve hardly any money⁠—⁠not enough
for the cab in it. You gave me half-a-sovereign, you know, and I paid for
those gloves, and got a new bottle of that mixture at the chemist’s.”
“Only three shillings left!” Andreas exclaimed, opening the purse, and
screwing his mouth up curiously. “Only three shillings left, out of a whole
half-sovereign! So! London’s the dearest town for everything on earth I
ever lived in. Only three shillings left! Well, that’s enough for the cab; it’s a
one-and-sixpenny fare, and I rather think they double it at midnight.”

“Mayn’t I have sixpence over for trinkgeld?” Linnet ventured to inquire,
in a timid voice. “When they go so far at this time of night, they always
expect something.”
“No; certainly not,” Andreas answered; “why on earth should you give
it to them? If you or I expect something, do other people make that any
reason for giving it us? Three shillings is the legal fare; if he doesn’t like
that⁠—⁠there’s no compulsion⁠—⁠he needn’t be a cabman. Three-and-sixpence
indeed! why you talk as if it was water! Three-and-sixpence is a lot to spend
on oneself in a single evening.”
“I should have thought so at St Valentin,” Linnet answered, softly; “but
I earn so much, now. You must save a great deal, Andreas.”
“And I spent a great deal in getting you trained and educated,” Andreas
retorted with a sneer. “But that’s all forgotten. You never think about that.
You talk as though it was you yourself by your unaided skill who earned all
the money. How could you ever have earned it, I should like to know, if I
hadn’t put you in the way of getting a thorough musical training? You were
a sennerin when I married you⁠—⁠and now you’re a lady, Signora. Besides,
there’s your dress; remember, that swallows up a good third of what we
earn. I say we advisedly, for the capital invested earns its share of the total
just as truly as you do.”
“But, Andreas, I only want sixpence,” Linnet pleaded, earnestly. “For
the poor cold cabman! I’m sure I don’t spend much⁠—⁠not compared with
what I get; and the man looks old and cold and tired. I ought to have a
shilling or two a week for pocket money. It’s like a child to have to ask you
for every penny I’m spending.”
Andreas pulled out half-a-crown, which he handed her grudgingly.
“There, take that, and hold your tongue,” he said. “It’s no use speaking to
you. I told you before not to talk in this misty air. If you don’t care yourself
whether it hurts you or not, you owe it to me, at least, after all I’ve done for
you.”
Linnet leant back in her place, and began to cry silently. She let the tears
trickle one by one down her cheeks. As Andreas grew richer, she thought,
he grew harder and harder to her. For some minutes, however, her husband
didn’t seem even to notice her tears. Then he turned upon her suddenly. “If
you’re going to do like that,” he said, “your eyes’ll be too red and swollen
to appear at all on Monday⁠—⁠and what’ll happen then, I’d like to know,

Signora. Dry them up; dry them up at once, I tell you. Haven’t I given you
the money?”
Linnet dried her eyes as she was bid; she always obeyed him. But she
thought involuntarily of how kind Will had been, and how nicely he had
spoken to her. And then⁠—⁠oh, then, she clasped the little Madonna hard in
her fist once more, and prayed low to be given strength to endure her
burden!

CHAPTER XXXIII

PLAYING WITH FIRE

And yet, Linnet was happier that first season in London than ever before
since her marriage with Andreas. She knew well why. In fear and trembling,
with many a qualm of conscience, she nevertheless confessed to herself the
simple truth; it was that Will was near, and she felt at all times dimly
conscious of his nearness. Not that she saw much of him; both she and Will
sedulously avoided that pitfall; but from time to time they met, for the most
part by accident; and even when they didn’t, she knew instinctively Will
was watching over her unseen, and guarding her. She was no longer alone
in the great outer world; she had some one to love her, to care for her, to
observe her. Often, as she sang, her eyes fell on his face upturned in the
stalls towards her; her heart gave a throb; she faltered and half-
paused⁠—⁠then went on again all the happier. Often, too, as she walked in
Kensington Gardens with Andreas, Will would happen to pass by⁠—⁠so
natural for a man who lives in Craven Street, Strand, to be strolling of an
afternoon in Kensington Gardens!⁠—⁠and whenever he passed, he stopped
and spoke a few words to her, which Linnet answered in her pretty, hardly
foreign English.
“How well you speak now!” Will exclaimed, one such day, as she
described to him in glowing terms some duchess’s house she had lately
visited.
The delicate glow that rose so readily to that rich brown cheek flushed
Linnet’s face once more as she answered, well pleased, “Oh yes; I had so
many reasons, you see, Herr Will, for learning it!”⁠—⁠she called him Herr
Will even in English still⁠—⁠it was a familiar sound, and for old times’ sake
she loved it;⁠—⁠then she added, half-shamefacedly, “Andreas always said it
was wiser so; I should make my best fortunes in England and America.”
Will nodded, and passed on, pretending not to catch at her half-
suppressed meaning; but he knew in his own heart what her chief reason
was for taking so much pains to improve her English.
They saw but little of one another, to be sure, and that little by chance;
though Andreas Hausberger, at least, made no effort to keep them apart. On
the contrary, if ever they met by appointment at all, ’twas at Andreas’s own
special desire or invitation. The wise Wirth of St Valentin was too prudent a
man to give way, like Franz Lindner, to pettish freaks of pure personal
jealousy. He noted, indeed, that Linnet was happiest when she saw most of